WINTER, Cornelius Jansen Walter

1817 - 1891

Cornelius Jansen Walter Winter was baptised at St Mary’s church, Bungay, Suffolk in November 1817, son of John Winter and his wife Martha née Watson (1794-1828), John's sister Emma was the wife of John Thomas Cullum. Cornelius was baptised again on 20 December 1818, on his parents move to worship in Bungay Independent Chapel. He trained as an artist under his father who was a stained-glass artist and Cornelius was a pupil of Edwin Cooper. Cornelius married at St Nicholas Church, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk on 3 June 1841, Anna Self Shipston (24 November 1816-28 February 1853), daughter of Samuel Shipston, a butcher of Harleston, Norfolk and they had six children, Walter William (1842-1924), a renowned photographer of Derby, Arthur Jansen (1843-1874), Elizabeth Anna (1846-1922), Neville Wilkie (1848-1849), Holmes Edwin Cornelius (1851-1935) and, shortly before Anna's death, Ellen (1853-1941). In 1851, Cornelius was a 32-year-old portrait and animal painter, living at Regent Street, Great Yarmouth with his 27 [sic] year-old wife Anna, born at Harleston and four of their children. Cornelius became a life-long friend of Dawson Turner (1775-1858), the Great Yarmouth banker, and illustrated some of his books. His wife died at Great Yarmouth in 1853 and in 1861, a 39 [sic] year-old painter of animals, portraits &c., living at 25 Regent’s Street, Great Yarmouth with children, 18-year-old Walter, an ornamental painter, 13-year-old Anna and 8-year-old Holmes, about which time he moved to Gorleston, then in Suffolk but now in Norfolk. Cornelius is very unsure of his own and his children’s ages and describes himself at various times as a portrait painter, in 1881 as a painter of animals, and in a directory two years later from Cattle Market Street, Norwich as ‘artist, antiquarian draughtsman, heraldic painter, dealer in old prints, curiosities, &c.’. By this time, he was an impecunious widower with only his eight-year-old grandson Arthur for company, living at Castle Meadow, Norwich. Between 1869 and 1879 he published illustrations of the rood screens at Barton Turf, Ranworth and Fritton churches, and then, over the four years from 1885 he published, in three parts a year to subscribers, his 'Norfolk Antiquities' (London 1889) which were bound into two volumes. Cornelius Jansen Walter Winter died at 34 Cattle Market Street, Norwich' on 21 January 1891, aged 71 [sic] probate being granted to Ellen [Horlock] and Walter William Winter, artist of Derby. Son Holmes Edwin Cornelius Winter (1851-1935) was also a painter who sometimes called himself ‘Rowland Winter’ but he was overtaken by insanity.




Works by This Artist