Ernest Townsend

Ernest Townsend (1 January 1880 – 22 January 1944) was a British portraitist from Derby. Townsend studied at Derby College of Art, Heatherleys in Chelsea and the Royal Academy. Among his works were a 1915 portrait of the Right Hon. Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. This picture now hangs in the National Liberal Club in London. Townsend was commissioned to create a design for the roofs of the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine factories in Derby so that they would appear to German bombers to be no more than a village. Early years Ernest Townsend was born in Parliament Street in Derby, the eighth child of James Townsend. His father was a coach builder with Holmes of Derby (later Sanderson & Holmes). Coach building had been the Townsend profession practised for at least three generations. James' father, William, had moved from Bitton in Gloucestershire to Newark in circa 1850 and then Derby in the late 1850s. However, by the age of five, Townsend's caregiver was his elder sister, Florence. His eldest brother William George Paulson Townsend was later the editor of the Art Workers Quarterly and publisher of numerous arts and furniture books.