[1] He went to school in Woolwich, and in 1840 was taken on as a draughtsman in the office of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, at that time chief engineer of the Great Western Railway.

[1][3] On 6 October 1870 Forbes joined the board of the Metropolitan District Railway, also close to bankruptcy at the time, and was chairman from 1872 until 1901.

[7]: 39 His executors chose not to hold a sale of the whole collection, which would have taken a week and might have depressed prices, but instead elected to sell it in parts.

The purchase of a large proportion of these by Abraham Preyer, including works by Théophile de Bock, Johannes Bosboom, Jozef Israëls, Jacob Simon Hendrik Kever, Jacob and Willem Maris, Anton Mauve, Johannes Albert Neuhuys, Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch and others, was one of the largest art transactions then known.

[8] The exhibition also included works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz and Jean-François Millet.