Arabella Prest Apple Blossom & Poem

Garbutt Hull Collection

This picture forms part of an interesting collection of works connected with early 19th-century Hull that were owned by an A. Garbutt. They tell a story of the profits of northern industry in the opening decades of the 19th century. The Garbutts were an old Hull family and a leading Primitive Methodist family in the area. The family included Robert Garbutt, a successful Hull merchant, William Parkinson Garbutt and his son David Parkinson Garbutt, a housing developer, and William Garbutt, shipbuilder.

Many of the artist names in the collection come from other families of local business and industry—timber merchants, shipbrokers, brewers and wine merchants—and most are by female members of these families. As well as contributions by Robert Fowler Garbutt, there are pictures in the collection by Elizabeth and Arabella Lambert, daughters of Hull wine merchant John Beevor Lambert (Arabella married York wine merchant William Prest) and Mary Gleadow (née Cooper), granddaughter of the Hull brewer Thomas Ward and wife of shipbuilder Robert Gleadow.

The pictures also tell of the reach of influence of these successful families—with trade connections in Russia, Canada and the Baltic. Robert Garbutt traded with Hackman and Co of Vyborg (Viipuri), in southern Finland, with interests in sawmills and shipbuilding. And there are paintings in the collection by Elizabeth Pickersgill, daughter of the Moscow merchant of distinction John Pickersgill (1765–1841), who had emigrated to Russia around 1791 and established many successful business interests there.