They had one child, Annie, born in Birmingham at the end of July 1874: the August baptism records William as ‘artist’ but Emma died in March 1876. However, it was not long before he found solace with her elder sister, Eleanor (nine years his senior): she needed it herself, having in 1871 divorced the husband who ten years earlier had deserted her and their two-year-old daughter (three other children had died in infancy). William and Eleanor unsurprisingly moved away from her family in Birmingham to London, where their son, Walter Percy, was born at Barnsbury late in 1877. In 1879, at St Pancras, a safe distance from those who knew them, they took the serious risk of getting married: between 1835 and 1907 marrying your wife’s sister was a criminal offence as well as against canon law.

In the 1881 census, William A. Thornbery, an ‘Artist, Oil Paintings’, was living with his family at South Hill Road, Gravesend. His daughter, Lily Maria, was born there early in 1880: she, too, became an artist of marine subjects albeit so far practically unknown, and died in Paddington, London, in 1964. The house, 140 feet up Windmill Hill, had (and still largely has) a fine view across the Thames to Tilbury Fort and Marshes. By 1891 they had another child (Howard, b.1881) and were still in Gravesend, but in a small terraced house, 163 Old Road West, with no view. The spelling this time is ‘Thornbury’ and William is a ‘Marine Artist’. In the 1901 census they are called ‘Thornbery’, the 21-year-old Lily being noted as an ‘art student’.

Thornbery seems to have avoided showing works at major exhibitions in London, although (as W. A. Thornbury) he had a Moonlight at the SBA in 1883/1884 and two, of a Misty day in the Pool (presumably the Pool of London) and a Sunset in the Pool in 1886. He appears in the index of artists in The Year’s Art from around 1898 and exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy about 1900, and two works in 1903 and one in 1904 at the Royal Cambrian Academy, Conway (which spelt his surname as ‘Thornberry’).

Thornbery died in January 1907 in ‘London City’ (a registration district that comprised the old City with a few small adjacent areas) though the GRO index lists him as ‘Thornberg’: he was buried at Manor Park Cemetery, Newham, on the 14th. By the time of the 1911 census his widow, Eleanor (d.1929), was living in Hampstead with Howard, who later moved to Australia, and Lily, whose occupation is given as ‘Marine Artist’. If she painted in her father’s style it is possible their work could be confused, though hers is barely known: in 1904, however, she exhibited a single work (Dawn) at the Royal Cambrian Academy from her father’s still unchanged Gravesend address. Much difficulty has arisen from confusion of Thornbery’s name as Thornbury or Thornely, and of him with Charles Thornely (1832/1833–1918), who is also often misleadingly called William or William Charles. He appears to have reinforced the problem by often signing ‘THORNLEY’, with a slightly larger T overlaid centrally on the H, for reasons on which one can only speculate. Given that his output was prolific, it is therefore under that name that his work frequently appears at sale.

Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Did the Gravesend painters Thornbery or Thornely paint 'Thames Barges off Tilbury...'?’