Ernest Gambart at Rosenstead
62 Avenue Road
by Bridget Clarke
Rosenstead in Avenue Road was the London home of Ernest Gambart (1814 –1902) a Belgian born art publisher and dealer who dominated the London art world in the mid-nineteenth century after his rrival in 1840.
He published fine art prints, having mutually beneficial agreements with artists such as Landseer, Millais, Holman Hunt and Frith, many of whom became his friends. He established the reputations of some, including Rosa Bonheur and Alma Tadema, for whom he arranged an exhibition in London. He worked closely with fine engravers to create black and white works that would convey the artist’s intent and later employed coloured lithography. His best selling reproductions included William Holman Hunt's Light of the World and Frith's Derby Day. With Agnew and Colnaghi, he dominated the art dealing world and became a British subject in 1846.
Annie Gambart 1835 - 1870
William Powell Frith
He married three times, his third wife Annie (1835 - 1870) being only sixteen when they married. They gave lavish balls and entertainments at their home, Rosenstead, a magnificently decorated and furnished villa in Avenue Road. Annie behaved with the irrepressible waywardness of a spoilt child, and her gay ringing laughter was like the sparkle of champagne. At their parties all the best-known artists of the day were to be seen, together with personalities from the world of literature, music and theatre. But during a fancy dress ball on the evening of Derby Day in May 1866 there was a devastating gas explosion which left the entire back of the house in ruins; such was the devastation that one painting was projected over several gardens and lodged in an apple tree.
In the following year, the Gambarts separated, Ernest allegedly having various little girls in lodgings, and Annie moved to Bayswater, where she died three years later. In the same year Gambart sold Rosenstead to his friend Frederick Goodall and retired to Nice, where he had a marble palace, Les Palmiers, built to his specification, which now houses the municipal archives.