Samuel Govier
Date of birth: 1857
Date of death: December 1934
Place of death: Lyme Regis
Category: sitter
Identity:
The blacksmith's forge in Lyme Regis, Dorset, was owned by the Govier family. George Govier (1825-1903), Master Smith, had married Isabella Palmer in 1851. He was a 57 year old widower at the time of the 1881 census, with three sons, Samuel E. (then aged 24), Tom P. (22), and George Anthony (14), and two daughters, Emma (29) and Eliza F. Govier (18).
Samuel Edward Govier married Martha Ann Turner in 1884. His daughter Ada Annie Govier (1885-1973) posed for Devonshire Daisy y446.
Life:
Whistler and his wife went to Lyme Regis when she was seriously ill with cancer. When this did not improve her health, she returned to London, but Whistler stayed on to work for some time.
He drew and painted the blacksmith's and the forge many times, for instance in The Little Forge, Lyme Regis y442. Govier posed for The Master Smith of Lyme Regis y450. He appears in several lithographs including Father and Son c123 and The Old Smith's Story c129.
He was interviewed by Robert Thurston Hopkins for Thomas Hardy's Dorset, New York, 1922. Photographs of Govier are preserved in the museum at Lyme Regis.
Bibliography:
Birth, census and death records, Ancestry.com, including 1911 census; Hopkins, Robert Thurston, Thomas Hardy's Dorset, New York, 1922. Francis Frith website.
