Early Life
James Bolivar Manson was born at 65 Appach Road, Brixton, London to Margaret Emily (née Deering) and James Alexander Manson, who was the first literary editor of the Daily Chronicle, an editor for Cassell & Co Ltd and of the Makers of British Art series for Walter Scott Publishing Co.. Manson's middle name was after Simón Bolívar. His grandfather was also named James Bolivar Manson. He had an older sister, Margaret Esther Manson, a younger sister, Rhoda Mary Manson, and three younger brothers, Charles Deering Manson, Robert Graham Manson (a musician and composer) and Magnus Murray Manson.
At the age of 16, he left Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and, in the face of his father's opposition to painting as a career, became an office boy with the publisher George Newnes, and then a bank clerk, a job he loathed and lightened with bird imitations and practical jokes. In the meantime he determinedly studied painting at Heatherley School of Fine Art from 1890 and then Lambeth School of Art, and was encouraged by Lilian Beatrice Laugher, a violinist who had studied with Joachim in Berlin and was staying in the household, which by that time was at 7 Ardbeg Road, Herne Hill, London.
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