The Collins Family History

NOTE:  Throughout the research of  Charles Collins' paintings I've noticed there has been some confusion and blatant misrepresentation over his paintings and those of another painter, Charles Wilkie Collins, especially from pages on the internet.  Due to this, whenever possible I have matched up the artists signatures to ensure the correct artists has been credited with his own work.  A lot of facts into the Collins family art and careers has come from research I've done through contact with reputable art dealers, finer auction houses and the RSA. 

Alfred Charles Jerome Collins (1851 - 1921) painted in both oil and watercolour and specialised in landscape, rustic, genre and animal subjects, especially sheep and cattle.  He liked to be called "Charles".  This is probably because his father, also an artist, was Alfred Collins and it would save some confusion within the household!  He lived and worked in South London and Dorking and it was in these areas that he found the majority of his subject matter, althought it is also recorded he worked in Scotland.  Being a prolific artist he exhibited many times in the London and Provincial Galleries and his paintings were as popular then as they are today.  Charles Collins exhibited at the Royal academy from 1867 - 1903, and also at the Society of Artists in Suffolk Street, London, and at the New Watercolour Society.  He died in September 1921, after being knocked down in Vincent Lane.  Both Charles and Georgiana are buried in Dorking Cemetery. (Source; Dorking Museum and Heritage Centre, Dorking).

George Edward Collins (1880 - 1968) lived in Dorking and was Art Master at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford during the 1930s and 1940s.  Called Peter by his students, he married Clara Perrin, a flower painter.  He did illustrations for an edition of the "Natural History of Selborne" by Gilbert White. His father was Charles Collins whose paintings are in Dorking Museum and his daughter is the artist Helen Collins whose portrait of her father is also in the Guildford Borough Art Collection. George Edward Collins  was a nature painter, printmaker and illustrator, and exhibited extensively at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Cambrian Academy from 1903 to 1937.  He illustrated Jefferies Wildlife in a Southern County, White's Selborne, and other works, and contributed to Kirkman's British Bird Book.