Robert Gibbings
Robert John Gibbings | |
---|---|
Born | Cork, Ireland | March 23, 1889
Died | January 19, 1958 | (aged 68)
Nationality | Irish |
Known for | Wood Engraving, Sculpture, Writing |
Robert John Gibbings (23 March 1889 – 19 January 1958) was an
His early life
Gibbings was born in Cork into a middle-class family. His father, the Reverend Edward Gibbings, was a Church of Ireland minister. His mother, Caroline, was the daughter of Robert Day, Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and president of The Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. He grew up in the town of Kinsale where his father was the rector of St Multose Church.[1]
He studied medicine for three years at
During the
In 1919 he married Moira Pennefather, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Edward Graham Pennefather from Tipperary, with whom he had four children, Patrick (1920), Brigid (1923) and Lawrence and Finnbar (1927).[1]
Gibbings and the Society of Wood Engravers
Gibbings's early contact with Noel Rooke at the Central School set the course of the rest of his artistic career when he asked Rooke: "Is it very foolish of me to try to be an artist?" and received the reply: "What else could you do?".[3] Life as an artist meant life as a wood engraver, and a life where Gibbings often struggled financially whilst, at the same time, receiving critical acclaim.
This was the case at this stage of his life. The critical acclaim came with an article in the
In 1922 Gibbings produced a wood engraving for the dust jacket of The Oppidan by Shane Leslie and in 1923 he illustrated Erewhon by Samuel Butler.
He was very much at the centre of developments in wood engraving. He was a founder member and leading light of the
In 1923 Gibbings received a commission for a set of wood engravings for The Lives of Gallant Ladies for the Golden Cockerel Press, his most important commission to date at 100 guineas.
Gibbings and the Golden Cockerel Press
Gibbings was working on the wood engravings The Lives of Gallant Ladies when Hal Taylor, the owner of the press, became very ill with tuberculosis and had to put it up for sale. He sought a loan from a friend, Hubert Pike, a director of Bentley Motors, to buy the press.[1] He took over in February 1924, paying £850 for the huts housing the business, the plant and goodwill. For the partially completed Gallant Ladies a further sum of £200 was paid. He also leased the house and land for £40 per annum. Gallant Ladies sold well with receipts of over £1,800, and saw the start of a golden period for the press and Gibbings and his family.[6]
The printing staff – Frank Young, Albert Cooper and Harry Gibbs – were skilled and capable of very fine work.
The first book for which Gibbings was entirely responsible was Moral Maxims by
Gibbings published some 71 titles at the press and printed a number of books for others. The size of a run was normally between 250 and 750, and the books were mostly bound in leather by bookbinders
Gibbings produced a number of books with his own wood engravings at the press, the highpoints being The True History of Lucian (1927) and Lamia by John Keats (1928).
Sales were strong during most of this period. Gibbings had established links with a number of booksellers, notably Bumpus in London, and negotiated a very favourable deal with
The Gibbings family had moved to Waltham Saint Lawrence when they bought the press. Gibbings and Moira indulged in a rather unconventional and hedonistic lifestyle (neither had any inhibitions about nudity), and saw a good deal of Gill, with whom they had a very easy-going relationship. Gibbings never settled into family life, and this became an issue for Moira as time passed.
Although much of his time was taken up by running the press, Gibbings did work for other publishers. He illustrated The Charm of Birds by
In February 1932 Gibbings wrote to the owners of the
Moira was less than delighted that Gibbings had twice left her in charge of the business and their family on her own and with very little consultation. Lawrence had tuberculosis and she decided to leave for South Africa to join her mother, taking the three youngest children. She returned in 1936 to finalise her divorce from Gibbings.
In the early 1930s the business climate had changed, and, as American sales had faltered, Gibbings had struggled on as the depression became more severe. The press was now moribund and Gibbings eventually sold up in 1933. The last book that he produced was Lord Adrian by Lord Dunsany (1933), illustrated with his own wood engravings.
Gibbings and Reading University
Gibbings had lost his livelihood and his family, though not his home. He did not sell the grounds and buildings of the press, as the new owners moved the press to London. To save money he moved out of the cottage into one of the huts in the grounds, and his son Patrick, who was at
In 1934 he completed the two books that he considered to be his best, Beasts and Saints by Helen Waddell and Glory of Life by Llewelyn Powys.[4] Glory of Life was produced by Gibbings, but published by the new owners of the Golden Cockerel Press.
This was the beginning of a sustained period as an author illustrator. In 1935 he produced A True Tale of Love in Tonga, another picture book along the lines of The Seventh Man, followed in 1936 by Coconut Island, a book for children. Both of these were based on his experiences in the
His reputation was growing and he was commissioned by Penguin Books to write a travel book. He went to Bermuda and the Red Sea, and wrote and illustrated Blue Angels and Whales (1938).[9] This was the first original writing commissioned by Penguin. The book led to Gibbings's appointment as art director of a new series of Penguin Illustrated Classics. The first ten titles, launched in May 1938, were illustrated by Gibbings (he illustrated Herman Melville's Typee) and other wood engravers.[10] The series was not a success and was discontinued after the issue of the first ten titles. Penguin did, however, publish Coconut Island in 1945 as a Puffin Story Book, as well as his wood engravings to books by Eleanor Doorly – The Insect Man (1942), The Microbe Man (1943) and The Radium Woman (1953).
As well as writing his own books, he continued to produce wood engravings for other commissions, such as George Scott-Moncrieff's A Book of Uncommon Prayer (1937) for
There were two major changes in his life. He had numbers of visitors from
A more positive change in his life was his appointment in 1936 as sessional lecturer in typography, book production and illustration at Reading University for one day a week. He was a very good teacher, and encouraged his students by producing a number of books illustrated with their wood engravings, including Fatherless Oberlus (1936), Loftur (1939) and The Diary of W. Lashly (1939), the diary of
Gibbings and the river books
In 1940 Elisabeth and the two children were evacuated to Canada. They returned in summer 1945, a few weeks before Gibbings set off to the South Seas for well over a year.
While Elisabeth was away Gibbings moved into St Patrick's Hall, an all-male hall of residence at the university, and settled into a bachelor life that he found very congenial. The teaching and the extra-curricular life were very much to his liking, and there was one factor that led him inexorably into this next phase of his artistic life.
Gibbings had begun to take part in natural history trips to the
Coming down the Wye (1942) and Lovely is the Lee (1944) followed, based on the familiar pattern of personal encounter and anecdote, and historical and cultural research, all illustrated by his wood engravings. In August 1945 he set out for Polynesia again. He visited many of the islands and spent six months in New Zealand (including Dunedin[13] and Napier[14]), returning in late 1947. He recounted his travels and experiences in Over the Reefs (1948). He returned to Ireland for Sweet Cork of Thee (1951), and then crossed the English Channel to write Coming down the Seine (1953). Trumpets from Montparnasse (1955) was based on his travels in France and Italy. His final book, based on the area around Long Wittenham, was Till I end my Song (1957). The somewhat prophetic title is the second half of the couplet from Spenser's Prothalamion that begins: "Sweet Thames run softly ...".
Writing his own books and producing the wood engravings for them kept him busy, but he did illustrate other books too, the most notable being an edition of The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin (1956).
The bearded figure of Gibbings became as familiar on British television as was his voice to radio listeners. David Attenborough remembers Gibbings as being one of the inspiring influences at the start of his career.
Gibbings's private life retained the turbulent nature that it had always had. Elisabeth came back to Waltham Saint Lawrence with the two girls in summer 1945, keen to have another child. Gibbings left for the South Seas after a very few weeks, leaving Elisabeth, who was by now pregnant, with their children. Their third child, Shaun, was born in April 1946. Gibbings's life at the time was complicated by his relationship with Patience Empson, Elisabeth's sister. The relationship had started when Patience typed up the manuscript for Coming Down the Wye and had since developed to the extent that she flew out to join him in Fiji in May 1946. She went mostly to help him with his writing, and partly at Elisabeth's suggestion. When Gibbings returned to England late in 1947 she stayed in New Zealand and then went to South Africa as Mrs. Empson felt that it would be improper for her to return with Gibbings. By April 1951 Elisabeth and Gibbings were divorced, and his relationship with Patience became more relaxed.[1]
In September 1955 Patience and Gibbings bought Footbridge Cottage, a tiny beehive of a cottage in Gibbings's words, in Long Wittenham on the banks of the Thames. Life there suited Gibbings, and he had a period of tranquility that he had not known previously. They lived there until Gibbings died of cancer in hospital at Oxford on 19 January 1958.[1] He is buried in the churchyard at Long Wittenham. The grave is marked by a simple headstone featuring his device of a crossed quill and graver, carved by Michael Black, a young sculptor who was a friend of Gibbings.[15]
An overview of his life and work
Gibbings dominates the period of the modern wood engraving revival in Britain, both by the longevity of his artistic career, and its significance. His is the most cited name in Joanna Selborne's monumental survey.[10] He was at the centre of all the developments in wood engraving, from the cubist engravings of his vanishing line period to the traditional landscape based engravings of the river books. He ran the Golden Cockerel Press at the period when it shaped the concept of the wood engraved book.
He was gripped by the possibilities of wood engravings, by the possibilities of expression within the very formal constraints of the medium: "But slowly a love of the wood came upon me. I began to enjoy the crisp purr of the graver as it furrowed the polished surface. I began to appreciate the cleanness of the white line that it incised: even the simplest silhouettes had an austere quality, a dignity, that could not be achieved by other means. Clear, precise statement, that was what it amounted to. Near enough wouldn't do: it had to be just right".[16]
Further reading
The definitive biography of Gibbings is by Martin Andrews,[1] and the definitive bibliography is by Mary Kirkus.[7] There is an article on his bookplate production in the Bookplate Journal,[17] and one on his working library in the Private Library.[18] There are a number of relevant articles in Matrix 9.[19]
There are two collections of his wood engravings, the first by Thomas Balston,[3] the second, more definitive collection by Patience Empson.[4]
The main collection of his work in Great Britain is held by
A significant number of Gibbings’ original wood engravings are also held at St Bride Library.
References
- ^ ISBN 1-901648-31-1.
- ^ Joanna Selborne, 'The Society of Wood Engravers: the early years’ in Craft History 1 (1988), published by Combined Arts.
- ^ a b Thomas Balston, The Wood-engravings of Robert Gibbings (London, Art and Technics, 1949).
- ^ a b c d e f g h Patience Empson, The Wood Engravings of Robert Gibbings (London, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1959).
- ^ Campbell Dodgson, Contemporary English Woodcuts (London, Duckworth, 1922).
- ^ ISBN 1-58456-093-2OCLC 50478453.
- ^ a b c d Mary Kirkus, Robert Gibbings: a Bibliography (London, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1962).
- Journal de la Société des Océanistes
- ^ Review (dated October 2009) of Blue Angels and Whales, Penguin Archive Project, Bristol University
- ^ ISBN 0-19-817408-X.
- ^ Scott-Moncrieff, George; Gibbings, Robert (1937). "The Cormorant". A Book of Uncommon Prayer. Methuen. pp. 14–15.
- ^ Thomas Balston, 'The River Books of Robert Gibbings' in Alphabet and Image 8 (December 1948).
- ^ "Black + White + Grey The Lives + Works of Eric Gill + Robert Gibbings". University of Otago Library. University of Otago. Archived from the original on 19 June 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
- ^ "Kiwis in Captivity". OUR Heritage. University of Otago. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
- ISBN 0-7090-2948-9.
- ^ Robert Gibbings, 'Thoughts on Wood' in The Saturday Book 17 (1957).
- ^ John Blatchley, 'The Ex-libris of Robert Gibbings' in Bookplate Journal (September 1995), published by the Bookplate Society.
- ^ Jim Maslen, 'Robert Gibbings, a man and his books' in Private Library (Spring 2008), published by the Private Libraries Association.
- ^ Various, Matrix 9 (Andoversford, The Whittington Press, 1989), ISSN 0261-3093.
- ^ Reading University's collection of the work of Gibbings – there is a link on this page to the catalogue of the 1989 centenary exhibition