Born Charles Durdin Kelly in Plymouth on 16 February, 1850, he came with his mother and sister to Newlyn in 1877 as the tenants of Pembroke Lodge, where he remained until 1882.

Charles Durdin and Henry MARTIN were the only two artists recorded as living in Newlyn at the time of the 1881 Census. Bednar has been unable to locate the registration of C Durdin's death, under either name, in the Indexes of Deaths in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. He is known to have painted a Newlyn title in 1879. By 1892 he listed an address in Tipperary, Ireland for sending-in to the RHA.