Frank O. Salisbury - Personal Life

Personal Life

One of eleven children, Salisbury was such a delicate child that he was educated at home, in the main by his student teacher sister, Emilie. He had only a few weeks formal schooling and began work by repairing bicycles at his father’s Cycle Depot in Harpenden. Uncertain as to his ability to find and maintain a job, the family determined that he be apprenticed, at the age of fifteen, to Henry James Salisbury, his eldest brother, who managed a major stained glass company in Alma Road, St Albans. He rapidly acquired all the practical skills of a stained glass artist and exhibited exceptional skills in the painterly detail that was applied to glass before its final firing. This led to his brother sponsoring him to attend Heatherley’s School of Art three days a week to further a career in painting. He then won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools which he attended for five years and where he won two silver medals and two scholarships, including the Landseer scholarship which funded his to travel to Italy in 1896. In due course he would have seventy exhibits accepted for the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, from 1899 until 1943, though he was never offered membership, which reportedly disappointed him very much.

In 1901 he married Alice Maude (d. 1951), daughter of C. Colmer Greenwood, with whom he had twin daughters. His first Royal Academy exhibit was a portrait of Alice and he often painted pictures of their children.

Salisbury died on 31 August 1962 at Sarum Chase, the neo-Tudor mansion he built, in 1932, in Hampstead, London.

His portrait (by Bassano, 1939) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.