Charles Davidson

Charles Grant Davidson (30 July 1824 – 19 April 1902) was a British painter, mainly of landscapes in watercolour.

He is not to be confused with the Scottish-born Charles Davidson Bell (1813-1882), who spent most of his career in the Cape Colony (South Africa) as Surveyor-General, but was also an artist and designer of stamps and heraldry.

Life Davidson was born in London, of Scottish parents, on 30 July 1824, and was left an orphan at an early age. After education at a school in Chelsea, he apprenticed himself to a seedsman and market-gardener in Brompton.

On 8 December 1842 he married Ann Topham, a sister of the watercolour painter Francis William Topham. They had two sons, one of whom, Charles Topham Davidson, became a landscape painter; and four daughters, one of whom, Annie Laura, married the painter Frank Holl.

Davidson lived for about 28 years in Redhill, Surrey; from 1882 he lived in Falmouth, Cornwall, where in that year he exhibited at the Jubilee Exhibition of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society.

He died in Falmouth on 19 April 1902.