Identity:

William George Daffarn was a landscape and genre painter. He was the son of Joseph Daffarn, a newspaper reporter, and Ellen E. Daffarn. His younger brother Thomas A. Daffarn (b. ca 1852) was an auctioneer's assistant. He married Alice Mangles, whose father James Henry Mangles was a neighbour of Tennyson.

Life:

Daffarn exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1872 onwards. He also exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery and at the Royal Society of British Artists, a society which named JW its President in 1886. He also exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London, as well as at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Manchester City Art Gallery, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham.

Daffarn was amongst those proposed invitees to a dinner organised by W. C. Symons to congratulate JW on being made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Munich, a dinner which was to be held at the Criterion in Piccadilly on 1 May 1889 [#02485].

In 1881 he lived at 47 Torriano Avenue with his 53 year old father and 53 year old mother. In 1901 he lived in Kensington.

Bibliography:

UK census 1881, from http://www.familysearch.org (accessed 2004); UK census 1901; Johnson, J., and A. Greutzner, The Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980; Wood, Christopher, Dictionary of Victorian Painters, Woodbridge, 1971; family tree at www.daffarn.com.