Harold John Wilde Gilman | |
|---|---|
 Harold John Wilde Gilman pictured in the 1888 Abingdon School photograph. Gilman is on the bottom row, 4th from right. | |
| Born | 11 February 1876 Rode, Somerset, England |
| Died | 12 February 1919 (aged 43) London, England |
| Occupation | Painter |
Harold John Wilde Gilman (11 February 1876 –12 February 1919) was a British painter of interiors, portraits and landscapes, and a founder-member of the Camden Town Group.
Harold John Wilde Gilman was the second son and one of the seven children of Emily Purcell Gulliver (1850–1940) and John Gilman (1840–1917), curate of Rode. [1] Though born in Rode, Somerset, Gilman spent his early years at Snargate Rectory, in the Romney Marshes in Kent, where his father was the Rector. He was educated in Kent, Abingdon School in Berkshire, from 1885 to 1890, [2] in Rochester and at Tonbridge School, and for one year at Brasenose College in Oxford University.
Although he developed an interest in art during a childhood convalescence period, Gilman did not begin his artistic training until after his non-collegiate year at Oxford University (cut short by ill health) and after working in the Ukraine as a tutor to a British family in Odessa (1895). In 1896 he entered the Hastings School of Art to study painting, but in 1897 transferred to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he remained from 1897 to 1901, and where he met Spencer Gore. In 1902 he went to Spain and spent over a year studying Spanish masters. Velázquez and Goya as well as Whistler were major early influences.
At this time he met the American painter Grace Cornelia Canedy (1869–1965), [3] they had both been copying Velázquez in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. They married on 7 February 1903 in the garden of the United States consulate in Toledo, Spain. The couple settled in London (apart from a visit to her family in Chicago, when Gilman ducked pressure to join the Canedy family business). They had five children, of whom three survived, Elizabeth (born in London 19 January 1904), Hannah (born 4 February 1905 in Chicago), and David Canedy (born on 20 September 1908, at Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire). [1] The family address at this time was 15 Westholm Green, Letchworth. Grace Gilman left him in 1909, taking her three children to Chicago. The couple were later divorced.
Harold Gilman was married, for the second time, to (Dorothy) Sylvia Hardy formerly Meyer (1892–1971), [4] [5] an artist he had met at Westminster and who had studied with him since 1914. She had their child in December 1917 and they married on 20 April 1918, on learning that Gilman's divorce had been finalised. After Gilman's death, in 1921 Sylvia married Leofric Gilman, his brother. [1]
Meeting Walter Sickert in 1907, Gilman became a founder member of both the Fitzroy Street Group (in 1907) and the Camden Town Group (in 1911). In the meantime he joined the Allied Artists' Association, moved to Letchworth, and began to show influence from work of Vuillard as well as Sickert.
In 1910 he was stimulated by the first post-Impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, and visited Paris with Ginner. He soon outpaced Sickert's understanding of post-Impressionism and moved out from under his shadow, using ever stronger colour, under the influence of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Signac. In 1913 he exhibited jointly with Gore, and became the first president of the London Group, and identified with Charles Ginner as a 'Neo-Realist', exhibiting with Ginner under that label in 1914.
Gilman visited Scandinavia in 1912 and 1913, and may have travelled with the artist William Ratcliffe, who had relations there. Gilman made studies of the environment, and painted Canal Bridge, Flekkefjord, an accurate depiction, whose subject is likely to have been inspired by Van Gogh's depiction of a similar bridge in Provence. [6] Gilman had rejected Van Gogh's work when he first encountered it, but later became a strong admirer. According to Wyndham Lewis, he kept postcards of Van Gogh's work on his wall and sometimes hung one of his own works next to them, if he was especially satisfied with it. [6]
In 1914 he joined Robert Bevan's short-lived Cumberland Market Group, with Charles Ginner and (later) John Nash. In 1915 the group held their only exhibition.
He taught at the Westminster School of Art where he influenced students who included Mary Godwin, [7] Ruth Doggett, and Marjorie Sherlock. [8] He then started his own school with Ginner.
In 1918 he was commissioned to travel to Nova Scotia by the Canadian War Records; and painted a picture of Halifax Harbour for the War Memorial at Ottawa.
He died in London on 12 February 1919, of the Spanish flu.
Exhibitions were devoted to him at the Tate in 1954 and 1981, and he also featured in its 2007–2008 Camden Town Group retrospective at Tate Britain.
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Walter Richard Sickert was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the mid and late 20th century.
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was formed from the merger of the Camden Town Group, an all-male group, and the Fitzroy Street Group. It holds open submission exhibitions for members and guest artists.
Laura Sylvia Gosse was an English painter and printmaker. She also ran an art school with the painter Walter Sickert.
Charles Isaac Ginner was a British painter of landscape and urban subjects. Born in the south of France at Cannes, of British parents, in 1910 he settled in London, where he was an associate of Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman and a key member of the Camden Town Group.
Spencer Frederick Gore was a British painter of landscapes, music-hall scenes and interiors, usually with single figures. He was the first president of the Camden Town Group, and was influenced by the Post-Impressionists.
Lucien Pissarro was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhibited with Les XX. Apart from his landscapes he painted a few still lifes and family portraits. Until 1890 he worked in France, but thereafter was based in Britain.
James Dickson Innes was a British painter, mainly of mountain landscapes but occasionally of figure subjects. He worked in both oils and watercolours.
Henry Tonks, FRCS was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher.
Francis Vane Phipson Rutter was a British art critic, curator and activist.
James Bolivar Manson was an artist and worked at the Tate gallery for 25 years, including serving as its director from 1930 to 1938. In the Tate's own evaluation he was the "least successful" of their directors. His time there was frustrated by his stymied ambition as a painter and he declined into alcoholism, culminating in a drunken outburst at an official dinner in Paris. Although his art policies were more advanced than previously at the Tate and embraced Impressionism, he stopped short of accepting newer artistic movements like Surrealism and German Expressionism, thus earning the scorn of critics such as Douglas Cooper. He retired on the grounds of ill health and resumed his career as a flower painter until his death.
Malcolm Cyril Drummond was an English painter and printmaker, noted for his paintings of urban scenes and interiors. Influenced by the Post-Impressionists and Walter Sickert, he was a member of the Camden Town Group and the London Group.
Robert Polhill Bevan was a British painter, draughtsman and lithographer who was married to the Polish-born artist Stanisława de Karłowska. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.
The Cumberland Market Group was a short-lived artistic grouping in early twentieth century London. The group met in the studio of Robert Bevan in Cumberland Market, the old hay and straw market off Albany Street, and held one exhibition.
The Stafford Gallery was an early 20th-century art gallery in London. Artists whose works were exhibited there include both internationally known painters such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Gustave Courbet and significant English figures such as Walter Sickert and Sir William Nicholson.
William Ratcliffe was one of the Camden Town Group of artists in early twentieth-century England. Although he never achieved the fame of other members of the Group, such as his friend and mentor Harold Gilman, he remained a full-time artist throughout his life, relying on the support of friends and family.
Marjorie Sherlock (1897-1973) was a British painter and etcher. Three books of her etchings were published between 1925 and 1932. Her painting Liverpool Street Station, now in the Government Art Collection, was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1917 and in 1987 was at 10 Downing Street when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Mary Godwin (1887–1960) was a British oil painter, water colourist and etcher, who often chose landscapes, interiors, and figures as subjects. She studied at the Women’s Department of King’s College with John Byam Shaw, and at Westminster Technical Institute with Walter Sickert and Harold Gilman. She was influenced by the Camden Town Group, and joined its successor, The London Group (LG) in 1914.
Ruth Thornhill Doggett was an English artist and a member of the London Group, known for her control of colour and composition in landscapes, still lifes and interiors.
Diana White was a British artist and translator. She painted Impressionist-style landscapes and translated, into English, books authored in French and Danish. Her most sought-after work is the 1903 book The Descent of Ishtar, of which only 226 copies were printed.
