Stanley Horace Gardiner
Born in Reading in 1887, Gardiner began his working life as a house decorator, necessitating a daily bike ride of 14 miles on a ramshackle bike. After attending evening classes he won himself a scholarship to Reading University to study Fine Art under W.S.Collingwood.
An exhibition of his paintings helped fund a move to Cornwall in 1923 where the family settled in Lamorna. Times were always hard for the artist and to make ends meet he worked as a deckhand on fishing boats and as a framer, framing pictures for Stanhope Forbes, Birch and other artists.
Encouraged by Birch, Gardiner continued to paint, developing his own style of landscape painting and after moving down the valley to Lily Cottage had his first success at the RA. He joined the St Ives Society of Artists in 1938.
In February 1939 Gardiner held his first one-man show at the Fine Art Society in London, exhibiting 42 paintings of Cornwall. An art critic said of his work, "his fluent use of paint and swift impressionism, born of long companionship with nature and singleness of purpose".
Towards the end of his life, Gardiner concentrated mainly on still life paintings of flowers using vibrant colours. He died in 1952.