Thomas Gambier Parry

Thomas Gambier Parry, J.P., D.L., (22 February 1816 – 28 September 1888) was an English artist and art collector. He is best remembered for his development of the Gambier Parry process of fresco painting.

Gambier Parry's parents, Richard and Mary Parry of Banstead, Surrey, died when he was young and he was raised by his maternal aunts and uncles, the Gambiers. He was the nephew of James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He moved to Highnam Court, Gloucestershire when he was 21 and, in 1839, he married, firstly, Anna Maria Isabella Fynes-Clinton, daughter of Henry Fynes Clinton. Only two of their six children survived to adulthood, Clinton Charles Parry and Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (the composer), with Isabella surviving the birth of Hubert in 1848 by only twelve days. In 1851, Gambier Parry married, secondly, Ethelinda Lear, daughter of Francis Lean, dean of Salisbury, by whom he had six children.

Thomas Gambier-Parry's father and grandfather were both directors of the British East India Company and Gambier Parry devoted his inherited wealth to good works. He adopted the principles of the Tractarian Movement, and was a prominent member of the Ecclesiological Society. Thomas Gambier Parry was a notable collector of medieval and renaissance art; the Courtauld Institute of Art later acquired his collection.

After studying the technique of the Italian fresco painters, Thomas Gambier-Parry developed his own spirit fresco method and executed grand-scale mural projects at Ely Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral and the parish church at Highnam.

He gained the reputation of a philanthropist, founding a children's hospital, orphanage, and college of science and art at Gloucester, and providing a church and school for his tenants at Highnam.

He constructed the Church of the Holy Innocents, Highnam between 1849 and 1851 in memory of his first wife and those of his children who had died at an early age. Gambier-Parry adorned the whole of the chancel, including the roof, and much of the nave with frescoes using the new Gambier Parry process he adapted from his study of Italian fresco painters.

He started to layout the Highnam Court gardens in 1840 and was one of the first to make a pinetum; by 1874 the gardens rivalled any in the UK.

Read more about Thomas Gambier Parry:  Descendants

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    Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.
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