Gordon Arthur (1867-1937)

Gordon Arthur Meadows was the eldest son of the marine painter Arthur Joseph Meadows. He was born in Bow at the turn of 1866–67 and grew up in Dover, where the 1881 census describes him, aged fourteen, as a “scholar and art pupil”, presumably his father’s.

Unlike his father he painted mostly river and landscape views, among them View of Windsor Castle from across the Thames (1904) and Barnes on Thames (1905). In 1895 he married Lucy Eliza H Laverick, and he died in London in 1937.

In May 1900 works by “Gordon Meadows” were included in an auction in Conduit Street, London (London Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph, 23 May 1900).

By 1921 Gordon and Lucy were living apart. On census night he was alone at 22 Courtnell Street, Paddington, an “artist (painter)” working on his own account at home, though out of work, and in his own hand he recorded one child under sixteen. Lucy, a machine hand at an engineering works, was at Bush Hill Park, Enfield, with their children Gordon, then an able seaman in the Royal Navy, Elma, Beryl, Mabel and Eily (1921 census).