SIR JOHN GILBERT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1764, 12 September 1885, Page 25

SIR JOHN GILBERT.

Everyone who will turn to William Harvey's illustrations to "Hudibras," his "British Valhalla, or "Year of the Poets," cannot fail to recognise the source of John Gilbert's earliest inspiration. The grouping, composition, handling, and general arrangement of the blacks and whites, are peculiar to, the works of both ; and some of John Gilbert's earlier and William Harvey's later works might be 'readily mistaken one for the other, although Harvey's drawing was then much sounder than Gilbert's was, and Gilbert's handling more free and delicate than Harvey's. Like Harvey, Gilbert was ambitious of becoming great in historical painting; like him, he had no proper early beginning in classical and scientific study ; like him, he was a patient self -teacher, and both wielded the pencil with curious dexterity and rapidity. Harvey was imaginative, dramatic, and remarkable for the wide variety of his subjects, and Sir John Gilbert is so in a still greater degree. To both, book-illustrating and wood-engraving are deeply and widely indebted for their progress, popularity, and present flourishing condition. Models for drawings on wood are out of the question where these drawings are produced in such great numbers with unceasing rapidity, and hence arose unavoidable mannerisms in the works of Harvey, which were afterwards reflected in the wood engravings of Gilbert, and are still less strongly traceable in his oil and water-colour paintings. An old friend of the writer's, now dead — Mr John Walmsley, the wood engraver — used to tell how he saw John Gilbert begin and finish one of these very clever and characteristic drawings which had so mwch to do with the once enormous success of the London Journal, while he sat at the artist's table finishing his breakfast. He used to say that models would hays been worse than useless to Gilbert, and adds, " His best models are those he creates in his own mind. No living figures posed to express what they never felt could have inspired John Gilbert to produce work so full of picturesque beauty and dramatic expression." He was, to a certain extent, right ; for j

nothing is more 'destructive to imaginative! power and vigour of conception than slow, laborious, and slavish, matter-of-fact imitation. Sir John Gilbert began his career in a countinghouse, but was so often caught making figures other than arithmetical ones that it was soon perceived he was quite unfit for commercial occupation. He then studied art for a profession, sought admission into the schools of the Royal Academy, and failed to meet those preliminary tests of ability, which were not then, however, either so severe or so strictly enforced as they have been since. As resolute and undaunted as many of his great predecessors had been under similar circumstances, Sir John began to draw and paint with no other assistance than a few lessons in colour, given him by the famous . fruit and flower painter, George Lance, who was then* like Gilbert himself, young and comparatively unknown. Like Harvey, Gilbert was compelled to abandon the brush and canvas fcr psncil and wood-block. In this field of art exeition he soon came to the front, and quickly out-distanced all his competitors, publishers contending for his work with the utmost eagerness, bidding one against the other to secure his services, woodengravers being not one whit less anxious for the honour of " cutting" for him. He was a constant contributor to the early volumes of the Illustrated London News, and sent into the world many hundreds of drawings in connection with literary works of every kind— good, bad, very bad, and indifferent. He illustrated " Pickwick" and Shakespeare, innumerable serial novels and short stories, turning out an incredible quantity of productions, but not one that I remember, however slight, that gave signs of indolent, slovenly, or careless work. The drawing was often strikingly inaccurate, but his wealth of originality and imaginative power, notwithstanding the incessant drain it suffered, never failed him ; the delicacy and freedom of his execution, the singular success with which he met the requirements of both engraver* and .printer, his admirable grouping, composition, and knowledge of " colour" (as the term is applied to black and white, with their intermediate tones), awakened universal admiration. As was to be expected from one who laboured so unintermittently without models, mannerisms orept into his work, and everybody knew the little corkscrew flourishes in which he so profusely luxuriated. There never was, however, a wood draughtsman who had a more masterful knowledge of all the technical requirements of his practice, an artist more imaginative, or a more successful book-illustrator. His reputation in this direction was at its highest) when he began to return to his first love, painting, and gradually withdrew from drawing on wood. In 1836 he appeared for the first time in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, and he soon began to figure frequently on the walls of the now- vanished British Institution. The reality of his triumphant achievements is proved by bis present position ; for he owes to them his title, ' his Presidency of the Old Water-Colour Society, and the honour of Royal Academician. Gilbert's first contribution to the Royal Academy Exhibition appeared in 1838, but he had exhibited a water-coloiir production previously at the Suffolk street Gallery. — London Society.