Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Davidson, Charles
DAVIDSON, CHARLES (1824–1902), water-colour painter, born in London, of Scottish parents, on 30 July 1824, was left an orphan at an early age. After education at a school in Chelsea, he apprenticed himself to a seedsman and market-gardener at Brompton. At the end of a year he forfeited his premium in order to study music, but finally decided on painting, and worked for some years under John Absolon, a member of the New Water Colour Society (now the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours). Of that society he was himself elected an associate in 1847 and a member in 1849. He resigned his membership in 1853, and on 12 Feb. 1855 was elected an associate of the Old Water Colour Society (now the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours); he became a full member on 14 June 1858 and an honorary retired member in 1897. A friend of John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, and the Varleys, he soon established a high reputation. He exhibited from 1844 to 1902 at the Old Water Colour Society (where over 800 of his works appeared), at the New Water Colour Society, the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the Royal Society of British Artists, and elsewhere. His subjects were chiefly typical English landscapes, and he was skilful in depicting the homely scenes of the countryside. He worked a good deal in Wales. A few of his paintings were chromolithographed by Messrs. Day & Son.
Davidson resided for about twenty-eight years at Redhill, Surrey, and from 1882 at Trevena, Falmouth, where he died on 19 April 1902. About 1843 he married a sister of Francis William Topham [q. v.]; he had two sons and four daughters, the eldest of whom became the wife of Frank Holl, R.A. [q. v.]. The Victoria and Albert Museum owns six water-colour drawings by Davidson; four of them are at the Bethnal Green Museum.
[Private information; Graves, Dict. of Artists; A. M. Reynolds, Life of Frank Holl, 1912, pp. 36-40; Cat. of Water Colours, Victoria and Albert Museum; The Year's Art, 1890, p. 32 (portrait); W. J. Stillman, Autobiog. of a Journalist, 1901, pp. 110-2; The Times, 22 April 1902.]