Victorian Art in Britain

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The Dictionary of Victorian Painters tells us that John Gilbert gave up a promising career as an estate agent to take up painting. This decision to move away from a life as a parasite is to be applauded. Initially, like so many other artists of the day he worked as an illustrator. He illustrated many books, and worked regularly for the Illustrated London News, a publication which this ageing writer remembers from schooldays. The type of historic genre picture which was his speciality is now totally extinct. Gilbert worked in both watercolour and oil. He was elected Associate of the Old Water-colour Society in 1852, Member in 1854, and President in in 1871. He became an Associate of the Royal Academy, and a full Academician in 1876. He was knighted in 1872. Like so many obituaries of the time, that produced below from The Times treats his private life and personality as a closely guarded secret, emphatically no business of its readers.  

OBITUARY - The Times, October 7, 1897

We announce with severe regret the death of the distinguished artist Sir John Gilbert, RA, PRWS, which occurred at his residence, Vanbrugh-park, Blackheath, at 5 o’clock on Tuesday evening. He had been for a long time past confined to his house suffering from paralysis. About a month ago his heart became affected, and in his own immediate circle his death was not unexpected. His life, though long, was uneventful. He was the son of Mr George Felix Gilbert, of Blackheath, and was born at Blackheath in 1817. It may be said of him briefly that, after a very slight artistic training, he came before the public when he was only a lad of 19’ since which time his whole life has been devoted to the practice of art and the furtherance of its interests. The strong individuality of all his work gave him from the first a very definite place among his fellow-artists. He worked with equal success in oil and water-colour; but his talents were somewhat lacking in versatility, and rarely lead him beyond a certain limited range. Yet within that range and in his own chosen path no one of our generation has worked with more spirit or better effect. He was a great admirer of Shakespeare and Cervantes, and had, besides an eye for the humorous and the dramatic, a kind of chivalrous sympathy for the scenes and characters that those great writers have given to the world. It is, in fact, this evident appreciation of the later Middle Ages that nine times out of ten inspired his paintings. They are picturesque enough, but are far, indeed, from being, as they might have been in the hands of inferior men, costume pictures. Sir John Gilbert’s cavaliers, trumpeters, and standard-bearers have a grand air, their steeds are genuine war horses, and both men and horses, on the march, and in the battle, group themselves heroically. Nor, in his many Shakespearean characters and in his Don Quixotes, though there is plenty of drama, is there anything theatrical or stagey. The romance, it may be, is old-fashioned, but it was felt and realized by the painter, and it makes no excessive demands on the learning and cultivation of the spectator. Perhaps it is the drawing rather than the colour that one most admires. The drawing is naturally that of the veteran who illustrated many authors - Shakespeare, for instance, and Cervantes, and Longfellow, to name only some of them - and who drew for many years from its first origination for the Illustrated London News; the colour, rich as it often is, is sometimes a little monotonous, and seems a subordinate affair. But of his masculine vigour of drawing there can be no question. He loved nature too, and placed many of his figures in aptly romantic surroundings, on wild heaths fit for Macbeth’s witches, or among the gnarled trees of Arden, or Sherwood.

There is no need to distinguish between Sir John Gilbert’s watercolours and his oil paintings. He worked in both methods concurrently, and in the same style, and he had so complete a command of both that we do not know which of them had his own preference, or added most to his reputation. His first exhibited pictures were a watercolour, “The arrest of Lord Hastings by the Duke of Gloucester,” which was shown at the Suffolk-street exhibition of 1836, and an oil picture, which was at the Royal Academy, then at Somerset-house, in the same year. His early works were for many years sent to the British Institution; in later life he adhered loyally to the Watercolour Society, and to the Royal Academy, and, as far as our recollection goes, never wandered in the direction of the Grosvenor Gallery or the New Gallery. He had the double and unusual distinction of being a member of the Royal Academy (since 1876) and of the Old Water-colour Society since 1853. Of the latter society, now the Royal Watercolour Society, he became president in 1871, and here all his best watercolour work has been exhibited year by year. The society, though possessing many able members will find it difficult to choose a President as distinguished as Sir J Gilbert. His services were rewarded by a knighthood in 1872, and in France he was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was also an honorary member of several Continental art societies.

It would be superfluous to name more than a few of Sir J Gilbert’s best known works. Considering the length of his working life, these are not extraordinarily numerous. He never strained his rights as an Academician, or made excessive claims on wall space in either Piccadilly or Pall-mall. Among his works of the last 20 years we find “Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at the Castle,” ; “Crusaders,” a charge; oil version of a large watercolour painted in 1832; “Youth and Age,” a Shakespearean medley containing many figures; “Cardinal Wolseley at Leicester”; “Fair St George,” the combat with the Dragon, as far as possible removed from Sir E Burne-Jones’s rendering of the same subject; “The Trumpeter”; “The morning of the battle of Agincourt”; “The Standard Bearer”; and “Ego et Rex Meus” - Cardinal Wolseley and Henry V111. It should be added that he made magnificent gifts of his works to the cities of London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham.

The funeral has been fixed for Saturday next at 2.30 at Lewisham Cemetery.