John Gibbons (ironmaster)

The three brothers, John, Benjamin and Thomas, inherited their father's iron making businesses after his death in 1813 running them as a set of interlocking partnerships.

He began this activity while residing in Bristol in the 1810s and early 1820 where he fraternised with and supported local artists, especially Francis Danby and E. V. Rippingille, and participated in an informal sketching club with other collectors and painters.

When he moved to Staffordshire in the mid-1820s he continued to support these artists of Bristol as well as expanding his collecting interests to include a broader range of British art.

By the time of his death in 1851 his collection is estimated to have exceeded two hundred works of art in a gallery specially built at his London home, 16 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park.

[5] John Gibbons, who had a weak constitution all his life, died on 18 August 1851, leaving a widow, Elizabeth Steen (d.1889).