After attending Victoria College on  Jersey, he worked briefly as an architect and engineer before travelling to South Africa where he worked as a journalist. Becoming friends with Cecil Rhodes, he also worked as a government adviser.  Returning in 1880, Garstin moved to study at the Royal Academy of Antwerp and, between 1882 and 1884, he studied in Paris.

Following his marriage to Louisa ‘Dochie’ Jones, he and his bride followed many of his fellow Antwerp students to Newlyn in 1886 but they moved to Penzance in 1895 by which time they had had three children.  Their two sons, Crosbie and Denis, became journalists whilst their only daughter, Alethea Garstin (June 1st), became a renowned painter in her own right.  

Garstin specialised in small oils in the ‘plein air’ style and his most famous work is ‘The Rain, it raineth every day’ of Penzance promenade (pictured left).