John Gilbert (painter)

• 1. Introduction

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  John Gilbert was born on the 21st of July 1817 in Blackheath, Surrey, and by the time he died on the 5th of October 1897, he had produced over two thousand wood-engravings for a single publication. He never attended a formal art school. He was turned away from the Royal Academy Schools. He taught himself by copying prints, alone, with no institution behind him. Yet by the end of his life he held a knighthood, the presidency of the Royal Watercolour Society, and a reputation grand enough to earn him the nickname "the Walter Scott of painting." How does a self-taught artist who started as an apprentice at an estate agent's office become the most prolific illustrator of his era? That is what this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Unlikely Apprentice

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  George Lance was the only teacher Gilbert ever had, a single formal instruction in a life otherwise shaped by solitary practice. Before he ever put brush to canvas for himself, Gilbert spent his days in the offices of an estate agent, learning a trade that had nothing to do with art. He taught himself by copying prints, moving between watercolour, oils, and other media until he had mastered each one. By 1836 he was exhibiting at the Society of British Artists, and just two years later he appeared at the Royal Academy's own exhibitions, the same institution that had once refused to admit him as a student. The art patron Thomas Sheepshanks and the artist William Mulready saw what he was capable of. They were the ones who pushed him toward wood engraving, a medium that would define the rest of his working life.

• 3. The Illustrated London News

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  Gilbert's first step into print illustration was through Punch, but it was the Illustrated London News where his career found its true scale. He produced over two thousand wood-engravings for that publication alone, and extended his output further with work for The London Journal. The scope of that output is staggering even by the standards of professional illustrators. He also turned his engraving skills to books, producing illustrations for nearly all the important English poets. His illustrated edition of The Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Howard Staunton and published by George Routledge and Sons in 1866, ran to three volumes and contained 829 illustrations. A later edition, also edited by Staunton and likely published around 1895, carried over 511 illustrations under the title The Gilbert Shakespeare. The sheer volume of images he produced across these projects gave his name an almost synonymous association with illustrated Victorian literature.

• 4. The Walter Scott of Painting

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  Gilbert's nickname tied him to Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist, poet and historian, because both men shared a deep passion for past eras and battle scenes. Gilbert exhibited around four hundred pictures in watercolour and oil across the various exhibiting societies. His noted oil on canvas painting "The Plays of William Shakespeare," made around 1849, depicted scenes from all of Shakespeare's plays within a single work. Nearly sixty of his oil paintings are held in British national collections today. In 1870, three years before he received his knighthood, the Gilbert-Garret Competition for Sketching Clubs was founded at St. Martins School of Art, named after Gilbert as the competition's first president. He became president of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1871, and was knighted in 1872. When he was elected a full Royal Academician in 1876, he joined that year's intake alongside Edward John Poynter.

• 5. Legacy and Gift

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  In 1893, four years before his death, Gilbert presented a collection of his work to the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London. That act of gift-giving placed his paintings in one of London's most prominent civic collections, ensuring their survival and public visibility beyond the illustrated pages where most of his output had appeared. His illustrated edition of Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakspere, published in 1866 by Richard Clay and Sons of Bread Street Hill, was among the book projects he completed in the years surrounding that landmark Shakespeare set. Gilbert is buried at Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries. The Works of William Shakspere edited by Charles Knight, published in Boston by Estes and Lauriat in 1878, carried nearly four hundred illustrations by Gilbert, bringing his visual interpretation of Shakespeare to American readers as well.