painter, amateur photographer, teacher and surveyor, was born on 19 November 1820 in Chichester, Sussex, second son and fourth child of Joseph Francis Gilbert and Jane, née Snelling. He came to Victoria in November 1841 with his elder brother, George Alexander Gilbert, and the two were living together at Melbourne in 1843. Gilbert became tutor to some of the children of Joseph Docker at Wangaratta, then, in about 1846, to the family of John Cotton. Of an inventive disposition like his father and brother, Frank Gilbert made daguerreotype portraits at Cotton’s station in February 1847 (using Cotton’s photographic equipment) and Cotton also commented that Gilbert 'fancies he can draw and paint, but has little taste in this way’. Gilbert subsequently lived in Geelong and worked as a surveyor. In 1875, at Frank’s Fine Art Gallery, Malop Street, Geelong, he exhibited eleven English and colonial landscape views which he and other members of his family had painted, to be disposed of by an art union.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
