Charles Conder - Early Life

Early Life

Conder was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, the second son, of six children, of James Conder, civil engineer and Mary Ann Ayres. He spent several years as a young child in India before the death of his mother on 14 May 1873 in Bombay, aged 31 years; he was then sent back to England and attended a number of schools including a boarding school at Eastbourne, which he attended from 1877. He left school at 15, and his very religious, non-artistic father, against Charles's natural artistic inclinations, decided that he should follow in his footsteps as a civil engineer.

In 1884, at the age of 17, he was sent to Sydney, Australia, where he worked for his uncle, a land surveyor for the New South Wales government. However he disliked the work, much preferring to draw the landscape rather than survey it. In 1886, he left the job and became an artist for the "Illustrated Sydney News", where he was in the company of other artists such as Albert Henry Fullwood, Frank Mahoney and Benjamin Edwin Minns. He also attended the painting classes of Alfred James Daplyn and had joined the Art Society of New South Wales.