Henry Davy

She was the eldest daughter of William Gibson, surgeon of Carlton Colville and Willingham Hall, Beccles, Suffolk.

[2] Early in life Davy was apprenticed to a grocer at Halesworth, but his creative yearnings got the better of him and he left his apprenticeship to pursue drawing.

Instead he became apprenticed to John Sell Cotman at Great Yarmouth, and assisted him in the etching of his Norfolk architectural views and illustrations of monumental brasses, published in 1818 and 1819.

By this date he had also produced a series of Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in Suffolk which contained only twenty plates, because, although many had subscribed, the funds contributed were not very large.

[5] During the later 1830s and 1840s he also produced journalistic illustrations of public events – such as the Laying of the First Stone of Ipswich Docks (1839) – as well as making drawings of farming and agricultural subjects, and of archaeological finds.