Ralph Gordon Ellis was born in Arundel on 31 January 1885 at no.12 the High Street, overlooking the square.
[1][2] On leaving school, Ellis went away to London as an apprentice to a furniture draughtsman and designer, but never settled to the work.
[1] In 1913, three years after his marriage to Gertrude Seymour, a stonemason's daughter, he opened a little shop in her hometown of Bognor as an 'oil and colour man', selling home decorating materials and artists' supplies as well as his own paintings.
By the end of his commercial career he had painted well over two hundred signs for the Henty & Constable brewery alone.
He exhibited a portrait of Arthur Greaves, J.P at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1931;[4] El Rio in 1933.