William MATTHISON
1853–1926, England

William Matthison (1853–1926) was a Victorian watercolourist, many of whose pictures were made into chocolate-box-style postcards. He lived in Headington from 1915 to 1926, and his wife remained there until 1939. They are both buried in Headington Cemetery.

Matthison was born in Harborne (a parish that was transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire in 1891 and is now part of Birmingham). He was the son of a house agent, and attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham. At the age of 15 he took evening classes in advanced drawing at Birmingham’s Central School of Art and then became a pupil of the Birmingham artist Edward Watson.

In 1875 Matthison decided to become a professional artist. He spent the summer of 1877 sketching in south Warwickshire, and settled in the village of Tysoe, where on 6 August 1878 he married Mary Hannah Fessy. At the time of the 1881 census he and his wife with their three-month-old baby daughter Kate Pauline were living in Tysoe, Warwickshire with Kate’s mother, Ann Fessy. He was described in that census as a Landscape Painter.

Source: http://www.headington.org.uk/history/famous_people/matthison.htm