Mrs John Gilchrist and
Ernest Watt Gilchrist
(1819-1873 and 1859-1925)
1861

Volume 7, page 260, sitting number 9286.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs Gilchrist’ in the Silvy daybooks. The NPG database identifies her more fully as ‘Helen Warden Gilchrist (née Andrew).’

Born in Scotland on 29 May 1819, Helen Warden Andrew was the daughter of Thomas Andrew of Calcutta. 

She was baptised on 1 July 1819 at Mulravonside, Stirling, Scotland. 

On 14 June 1842 in Edinburgh she married John Gilchrist of Sydney. 

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at 48 Porchester Terrace, a stone’s throw from Silvy’s studio. John Gilchrist gave ‘Australian Merchant’ as his profession. Also present on the night of the census were their five sons and one daughter, aged 18 to 1. The household included seven live-in servants, among them a butler and a footman. 

Mrs Gilchrist died in Sydney on 18 December 1873. 

‘At Elystan, Sydney, on the 18th instant, Helen Warden Andrew, relict of John Gilchrist, Esq., of Dorchester Terrace, London, and Sydney, NSW’ (Greenock Advertiser, 25 December 1873). 

The child sitting on her lap in this portrait is probably Ernest Watt Gilchrist, born on 16 May 1859 [though the death was not registered until the last quarter of the year]. 

In 1881 he was a 21-year-old ‘Undergraduate of Cambridge Univerity’ living at 43 Leinster Terrace, Paddington, the home of his older brother Sydney James Learmonth Gilchrist, also a Cambridge undergraduate [who sat for Silvy on 4 May 1861]. 

Ernest Watt Gilchrist died on 14 May 1925 at 6 Royal Avenue, Chelsea, leaving an estate valued at £1622. The Index of Wills and Administrations also gives as his address ‘Villa Magda, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Alpes Maritime, France.’