File:View of the Harbour, St. George’s, Grenada, W.I. (print) GAC 6705.jpg

Landscape lithographer and painter Thomas Picken was the younger brother of draughtsman and lithographer Andrew (1815-1845). The brothers were two of four sons of novelist Andrew Picken (1788-1833) and his wife Janet Coxon (1792-1871). Thomas made lithographs for David Roberts's ‘The Holy Land’ (1842-49), William Payne's ‘The Lake Scenery of England’ (1859), John Parker Lawson's ‘Scotland Delineated’ (1847-54) and other works. He exhibited one painting at the Royal Academy in 1857 and ten at the Society of Artists, Suffolk Street (1846-75). Although generally thought to have emigrated to Australia in 1870, a 2004 entry in the ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’ reports that he was an inmate of the Charterhouse, London, from 1879.

Captain Henry A. Turner’s company of the first battalion of the Royal Artillery landed at Barbados on the Atholl troop ship early in 1849. The ‘lady of Captain Turner’ gave birth to a daughter on the neighbouring island of Grenada on 16 July that year. It was not until 1853 that another company of the Royal Artillery arrived at Barbados to release Turner’s company. In 1858 Turner presented two watercolour views of Grenada to the Royal Artillery Institution. Captain Henry may be Henry Austin Turner, who rose through the ranks of the Royal Artillery to become Lieutenant Colonel in 1855 and Major-General on his retirement in 1865. Henry Austin died at Bath in 1875 at the age of 60.