Robert Gibbings

Robert Gibbings studied at Central School of Art and Design. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is visual arts, art of sculpture and wood engraving technique. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are travel book. Work by Robert Gibbings is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Auckland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada and Print Collection.

• Name — Robert John Gibbings • Born — 23 March 1889 • Birthplace — Cork, Ireland • Died — 19 January 1958 • Place of death — Long Wittenham, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), England • Education — University College Cork Slade School of Art Central School of Art and Design • Known for — Wood Engraving, Sculpture, Writing • Relatives — Robert Day (grandfather)

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. He studied medicine for three years at University College Cork before deciding to persuade his parents to allow him to take up art. He studied under the painter Harry Scully in Cork and later at the Slade School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. During the First World War he served in the Royal Munster Fusiliers and was wounded at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles, was invalided out and resumed his studies in London. 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). • Illustration — Poster issued by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Ltd (1922)

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. 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. The printing staff – Frank Young, Albert Cooper, and Harry Gibbs – were skilled and capable of very fine work. Moira Gibbings helped her husband in the business, and Gibbings kept close links with A.E. Coppard, who had helped Taylor with the business side of the press and who was to become a close friend. Gibbings knew all the leading wood engravers of the day and a number of authors, which enabled him to publish modern texts as well as classic ones. The first book for which Gibbings was entirely responsible was Moral Maxims by Rochefoucault (1924). Eric Gill was brought into the fold when he quarrelled with Hilary Pepler over the publication of Enid Clay's Sonnets and Verses (1925) and transferred the book to Gibbings. In 1925 he went on to commission engravings from John Nash, Noel Rooke, David Jones, John Farleigh and Mabel Annesley among others. 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 Sangorski & Sutcliffe. The major titles were the four volume Canterbury Tales (1929 to 1931) and the Four Gospels (1931), both illustrated by Gill. Gibbings printed 15 copies of the Canterbury Tales on vellum, and 12 copies of the Four Gospels. Printing the Canterbury Tales dominated work at the press for two and a half years, and relatively few other books were printed during that period. However, the book was a considerable critical and financial success and grossed £14,000. Four Gospels was equally successful, and sold out shortly after publication in November 1931. Gibbings produced a number of books with his own wood engravings at the press, the high points 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 Random House in the USA. He bought out Pike with finance from another Irish friend, Mary Wiggin, and later bought her out, borrowing the money from Barclays Bank. 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 Viscount Grey of Falloden (1927) for Hodder & Stoughton, and A Mirror for Witches by Esther Forbes (1928) for Houghton Mifflin. When he sent the blocks to Houghton he added in his letter: "Next time you give me a job, for God's sake send me to the South Seas – I'm sick of English fogs". They were so impressed by the success of this book that they commissioned Gibbings to illustrate with wood engravings a book set in Tahiti that would be written by James Norman Hall, the author of Mutiny on the Bounty. Gibbings leapt at the chance and in 1929 he set out for Tahiti. He completed the wood engravings, but Hall did not complete the text. However, two books did emerge from this visit, The Seventh Man (1930), written, illustrated and published at the Golden Cockerel Press by Gibbings, and Iorana (1932), a semi-fictitious account by Gibbings of his time in Tahiti. Houghton published a bowdlerised version, and Duckworth the full version. In February 1932 Gibbings wrote to the owners of the Orient Line suggesting that he produce wood engravings for their publicity in return for a free cruise. They agreed, and he produced XIV Engravings on Wood for them, one of which was also used as a poster. 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 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 St Piran's Independent School in Maidenhead, stayed in another one when he was at home at the weekend. He did not seem deeply distressed about the loss of his family, although he did build up a close relationship with Patrick. The money from the sale of the press was enough to clear his debts, and a cloud seemed to lift. He wrote: "But what peace of mind when standing in the wooden hut to which I had moved, I could look about me and see not one thing that was worth five shillings to anyone else!" 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. 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 South Seas, and were followed by John Graham, Convict (1937), a version of a true account set in Australia. 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). 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. 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 Methuen, where each short poem such as "The Cormorant" faced one of his images. The cormorant prays "Give me the green wave force, / Show me where / The sweetest fishes swim". He continued to illustrate books for the Golden Cockerel Press and other publishers, designed a greetings telegram for the GPO, became involved with the Sun Bathing review and produced adverts for Shell Oil. There were two major changes in his life. He had numbers of visitors from Reading University, one of whom was Elisabeth Empson. Early in 1934 she discovered that she was pregnant. This came as something of a shock to her parents. There was a twenty-year age difference between her and Gibbings, and he was unable to marry her as he was still married to Moira. The couple moved down to Cornwall, where their daughter Vahine was born in November 1934 – they had two more children, another daughter Tiare (1937) and Shaun (1946). Elisabeth's parents came to accept the relationship, and gave the couple the money to build a cottage in the grounds at Waltham Saint Lawrence in 1935. Elisabeth and Gibbings were married in 1937 after Moira finally agreed to a divorce. The relationship was always strained, for much the same reasons that Gibbings's relationship with Moira was strained. He went off, for example, on two trips to Bermuda and the Red Sea, leaving Elisabeth with two young children to look after. 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 William Lashly, a survivor of Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole.

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. 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".

Robert Gibbings is recorded with the occupation visual artist. Classed in the genre travel book. Recorded as painter, illustrator, sculptor, artist and xylographer.