The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (189 page)

(1882–1940).
British sculptor, engraver, typographer, and writer. He began to earn his living as a letter cutter in 1903 and carved his first figure piece in 1910. In 1913 he became a convert to Roman Catholicism and was commissioned to make the
Stations of the Cross
at Westminster Cathedral, fourteen
relief
carvings which he carried out in 1914–18. These and the
Prospero and Ariel
group on Broadcasting House (1929–31) are his best-known sculptures. Gill was one of the chief protagonists in the movement for the revival of direct carving, and his work usually has an impressive simplicity of conception; he wrote that his ‘inability to draw naturalistically was, instead of a drawback, no less than my salvation. It compelled me … to concentrate upon something other than the superficial delights of fleshly appearance … to consider the significance of things.’ He tried to revive a religious attitude towards art and craftsmanship, and in life, as in his work and writing, he was a vigorous advocate of a romanticized medievalism. His unconventional behaviour was well known in his own time, but the most bizarre and unpleasant aspects of his life were not revealed until the publication of Fiona MacCarthy's biography in 1989: he had incestuous relationships with two of his sisters and two of his daughters and sexual congress with a dog. Gill was a major figure in the revival of book design and typography. He illustrated many books, and his ‘Perpetua’ and ‘Gill Sans-Serif’ typefaces are among the classics of 20th-cent. typography. His books include
Christianity and Art
(1927),
Art
(1934), and
Autobiography
(1940).

 
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(1673–1722).
French painter, draughtsman, and etcher. Few of his paintings survive, but his predilection for scenes from the
commedia dell'arte
(
Quarrel of the Cabmen
, Louvre, Paris) was inherited by his pupil
Watteau
. His work survives mainly in the form of drawings and etchings, and he excelled at designs in the elegant
Rococo
manner of
Audran
.

 
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(1757–1815).
One of the most eminent of English
caricaturists
. He began his career as an engraver of letterheads and although he later studied at the
Royal Academy
Schools, he seems to have been largely self-trained. After the publication of his print
A New Way to Pay the National Debt
(1786), a satire on the royal family, he found his bent in caricature and achieved enormous popularity. He enlarged the scope of
Hogarth's
satire, making his caricature more personal than Hogarth's general social comment, and he showed great fecundity and vividness of imagination. His career was cut short by insanity in 1811.

 
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(1876–1919).
English painter. He was a member of
Sickert's
circle, a founder of the
Camden Town Group
in 1911, and first President of the
London Group
in 1913. His early work was rather sombre, but under the influence of Sickert he adopted a higher colour register and a technique of using a mosaic of opaque touches. From Sickert also he derived his taste for working-class subjects. After Roger
Fry's
first
Post-Impressionist
exhibition (1910) and a visit to Paris (1911) he used very thick paint and bright (sometimes garish) colour. He was one of the most gifted English painters of his generation and one of the most distinctive in his reaction to Post-Impressionism, but his career was cut short by the influenza epidemic of 1919.

 
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(1733–1807).
English animal painter. He began his career as an apprentice to Samuel
Scott
, the marine painter, but turned early to the painting of horses, making a name with ‘portraits’ of celebrated racers. In occasional large canvases (
The Election of Darius
, City Art Gal., York) he contrived his own blend of horse and history painting. His son,
William Sawrey Gilpin
(1762–1843), was the first president of the Old Water-Colour Society. The Revd
William Gilpin
(1724–1804), brother of Sawrey Gilpin, was a writer and amateur draughtsman and one of the most important advocates of the
Picturesque
.

 
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