Herbert Wilson Foster was born in 1848. He was a student at the Nottingham School of Art and took up a post as a teacher there from 1893. He also worked for a time at the Minton factory as a porcelain decorator, painting contemporary personalities, including the Royal Family, as well as animals and birds. His paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy and in Europe. When he died at his home in West Bridgford in 1929, the Principal of the Nottingham School of Art, Mr J Else, was quoted in the obituary which appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post: 'Mr Foster was one of the most distinguished life masters in the country. He was certainly the best man we have ever had in that time. He was a brilliant student, and an exhibitor at the Royal Academy'. Nottinghamshire Archives holds a collection of diaries, letters and pictures of Herbert Wilson Foster.”