John Gibson (sculptor)

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John Gibson
John Gibson by Margaret Sarah Carpenter
Born(1790-06-19)19 June 1790
Conwy, Wales
Died27 January 1866(1866-01-27) (aged 75)
Rome, Italy
NationalityWelsh
Known forSculpture
Notable workQueen Victoria Supported by Justice and Clemency (1855); Hunter and dog (1838)
Paris by John Gibson RSA 1824

John Gibson

Royal Academy
, where many of his marbles and casts are currently on display.

Life

Early life

Detail of statue of William Huskisson by John Gibson in Pimlico Gardens, London.

Gibson was born near Conwy, Wales, where his father was a market gardener. When he was nine years old the family were on the point of emigrating to America, but his mother put a stop to this plan on their arrival at Liverpool, where they settled, and where Gibson was sent to school. He became fascinated by the displays in the windows of the city's print shops.[4] The painter and printseller John Turmeau lent him some drawings and plaster casts to copy.[5]

Education

At the age of fourteen, Gibson was apprenticed to a firm of cabinet-makers. He soon took a violent dislike to this work, however, and eventually managed to have his articles bought out by the monumental masons Samuel and Thomas Franceys.

Allerton, by which means he became acquainted with the designs of the great Italian masters.[4]

Francis Legatt Chantrey, the former urging him go to Rome as the highest school of sculpture in the world, the latter maintaining that London could do as much for him.[4]

Rome

Gibson's statue of Robert Peel, Westminster Abbey

Gibson arrived in Rome in October 1817, at a comparatively late age for a first visit. There he was generously received by Antonio Canova, to whom he had introductions, the Venetian sculptor putting not only his experience in art but his purse at the English student's service. Up to this time, though his designs show a fire and power of imagination in which no teaching is missed, Gibson had had no instruction, and had studied at no Academy. In Rome he first became acquainted with the rules and technicalities of art. Canova introduced him into the academy supported by Austria, and the first sense of his deficiencies in common matters of practice was depressing to him. He saw Italian youths already excelling in the drawing of the figure. But the tables were soon turned.[4] His first work in marble, Sleeping Shepherd Boy, was completed in 1824.[6]

Gibson was soon launched, and distinguished patrons, initially sent by Canova, made their way to his studio in the

Bacchante and Faun; his Amazon Thrown from her Horse, one of his most original productions, was taken from an accident he witnessed to a female rider in a circus; and Hunter and Dog was also the result of a street scene.[4]

Personal life

Throughout most of his time in Rome Gibson had an alleged relationship with the Welsh artist Penry Williams[7]

Death

Gibson was elected R.A. in 1836, and bequeathed all his property and the contents of his studio to the

Royal Academy, where his marbles and casts are open to the public as of 2005. He died at Rome on 7 January 1866 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery
there.

Reception

Tinted Venus, in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

In monumental and portrait statues for public places, necessarily represented in postures of dignity and repose, Gibson was very happy. His largest effort of this class was the group showing

Houses of Parliament, his finest work in the round. Of noble character also in execution and expression of thought is the statue of William Huskisson with the bared arm; and no less, in effect of aristocratic ease and refinement, the seated figure of Dudley North.[4]

Her Majesty Queen Victoria, supported by Justice and Clemency by John Gibson, Parliament, The Illustrated London News, 7 March 1857

Gibson's chief excellence however lay in basso rilievo. His thorough knowledge of the horse, and his constant study of the Elgin Marbles, casts of which are in Rome, resulted in the two bassi rilievi, the size of life, which belonged to Lord Fitzwilliam: The Hours Leading the Horses of the Sun, and Phaethon driving the Chariot of the Sun. Most of his memorial works are also in basso rilievo. Some of these are of a truly refined and pathetic character, such as the monument to the Countess of Leicester, wife of Thomas Coke, the 1st Earl, or that to his friend Mrs Huskisson in Chichester Cathedral, and that of the Bonomi children. Passion, either indulged or repressed, was the natural impulse of his art: repressed as in the Hours Leading the Horses of the Sun, and as in the Hunter and Dog; indulged as in the meeting of Hero and Leander, a drawing executed before he left England. Gibson was the first to introduce colour on his statues, first as a mere border to the drapery of a portrait statue of the queen, and by degrees extended to the entire flesh, as in his so-called Tinted Venus and in Love tormenting the Soul, both now in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.[4]

In all worldly affairs and the business of daily life he was simple and guileless in the extreme; but was resolute in matters of principle. He was visited by William Dean Howells in Naples who described him as "dressed with extraordinary slovenliness and indifference to clothes, had no collar, I think, and evidently did not know what he had one Everything about him bespoke the utmost unconsciousness and democratic plainness of life."[4]

Biographies

The letters between Gibson and

Lady Eastlake
.

  • John Gibson R.A. The World of the Master Sculptors is the first biography of Gibson in over a century. The book incorporates many illustrations and highlights Canova, Thorvaldsen, Spencer and Wyatt.
    ISBN 978-1-906823-71-9
    .

Published works

  • Imitations of Drawings By Iohn Gibson R.A. Sculptor. Engraved By G. Wenzel And L. Prosseda Rome 1852 [London]: J. Hogarth 1852

Gibson provided almost all the illustrations for:

  • Elizabeth Strutt The story of Psyche: with a classical enquiry into the significance and origin of the fable; by Elizabeth Strutt With Designs in Outline By John Gibson Esq. R.A. [London: s.n. 1852].[8]

Material by him is incorporated in:

  • Joseph Bonomi The proportions of the human figure, as handed down to us by Vitruvius, from the writings of the famous sculptors and painters of antiquity: to be which is added, the admirable method of measuring the figure, invented by John Gibson, sculptor; with description and illustrative outlines Third edition. London: Charles Robertson 1872;[8] Gibson is not credited in the 1st and 2nd editions, London: Henry Renshaw 1856 [1855] and London: Chapman & Hall; H. G. Bohn 1857

References

  1. ^ "June Artwork of the Month: Queen Victoria by John Gibson - News from Parliament - UK Parliament". Archived from the original on 26 April 2019.
  2. ^ pixeltocode.uk, PixelToCode. "Sir Robert Peel". Westminster Abbey.
  3. ^ ""William Huskisson" by John Gibson, RA 1790-l866". victorianweb.org.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911
  5. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10625. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  6. ^ Liverpool Museums: Sleeping Shepherd Boy, by John Gibson
  7. ^ Shopland, Norena 'Frances and Mary' from Forbidden Lives: LGBT stories from Wales Seren Books (2017)
  8. ^ a b Strutt, Elizabeth, fl. ca. 1851? Royal Academy of Arts Collections, Record number 04/3865. Accessed September 2011

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Gibson (sculptor).
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