Academic archive
Robert Gibbings
1889-1958
At Gallipoli, 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers
Robert Gibbings archive document
SEN resources
Robert Gibbings symbol story
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Biography
Robert Gibbings was born in Kinsale, near Cork in Ireland. He trained to study medicine at the University of Cork, but failed most of his examinations, because, he claimed, of spending too much time in the countryside studying plants, birds and animals. His family then allowed him to study art at the Slade School and the Central School of Art and Design in London and Gibbings quickly became a proficient wood engraver.
He signed up as an officer in the Royal Munster Fusiliers immediately after the beginning of the war in August 1914. On 1st June 1915, he joined the 1st Battalion for duty at Gallipoli. On the 28th he was involved in the attack along Gully Ravine Spur, on the left of the Allied line across the peninsula, when wounded by shrapnel in the neck and arm. He wrote to his father: ‘I have had the most marvellous escape. The Battalion were moving up to a big attack & I was with the first few men of my Company. We were taking cover under the crest of a nullah [ditch] as there was a lot of shrapnel. Suddenly with a fearful noise I felt what seemed like the blow of a sledgehammer tearing my whole throat away & at the same time a heavy bang on the left arm. I was sure I was done for and visions of all the people at home who would be sorry came before me. A couple of men bandaged me up & after a few minutes the doctor came along. He said I was frightfully lucky. It had gone clean through my neck just below my jaw and had not touched anything vital.’ Gibbings recovered, but would do no more fighting and remained on light duties until the end of the war. We only have a few of his works from that time, mostly famously his ‘Sunset over Lemnos’, a watercolour that depicts some of the invasion fleet at anchor near Gallipoli.
After the war, the quality of his wood engravings quickly made Gibbings one of the country’s foremost book illustrators, and he worked for many of the leading British publishers. In 1920 he was one of the small group who founded the Society of Wood Engravers (www.woodengravers.co.uk)
Gibbings had worked for the Golden Cockerel Press on several occasions and in 1924 was given the opportunity to buy the company. He and his wife Moira became pioneering and successful publishers.
The website dedicated to his life and work says accurately: ‘During his time at the Golden Cockerel Press from 1924-1933, Gibbings produced some of the finest books of the private press movement of the twentieth century. He commissioned and collaborated with leading artists of his generations such as Eric Gill, Eric Ravilious, John Nash, Agnes Miller Parker and Noel Rooke. He published some 71 titles at the press including the ‘Four Gospels’ (1931) and the four-volume ‘Canterbury Tales’ (1929-1931), both illustrated by Eric Gill. Both books were critical and financial successes and are considered masterpieces of book design and production.’ www.robertgibbings.org
His woodcuts remained hugely popular, but he was always worked in a range of media, for example producing some fine stone sculptures. He extended the range of his subject material by tours to Tahiti and Tonga (1929), the West Indies (1932) and the Red Sea (1938). On these trips he became fascinated by fish ‘more Gorgeous than anything I had seen in my life’. He sketched the ‘gorgeous’ life underwater on sheets of Xylonite, a substance rather like celluloid that, when roughened, accepts drawings made with a stick of graphite as a pencil. He wore a heavy old-fashioned diving helmet with an airline that relied on constant pumping by a lad on his boat. His pioneering approach opened up the wonders of the underwater world to an army of readers (for example, through his Blue Angels and Whales), while his illustrations in travel books allowed them natural history at ground level.
By 1933, the Golden Cockerel Press was bankrupt and Gibbings’ relationship with Moira was also over. In 1936 he became Senior Lecturer in Typography at the University of Reading. The University now holds the substantial archive of his lifework.
By the end of the 1930s Gibbings was combining superb illustrations with writing that evoked travels down his favourite rivers. Sweet Thames, Run Softly published in 1940, became a best seller: it exactly caught the spirit of affection for the English countryside that sustained people in wartime.
His final ‘career’ was as an early natural history presenter on radio and television, where he is said to have greatly influenced the young David Attenborough.
"[His style] came from the spirit, a mixture of poetic evocation, intense observation, factual detail and, above all, a sense of enjoyment and love of life." Martin J. Andrews
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The community
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Examples of work
The Special Collections of the University of Reading include the major archive of Gibbing’s work.
https://www.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/collections/sc-gibbings.aspxhttp://www.robertgibbings.org is a family maintained site which shows many of Gibbings woodcarvings and other artworks
Correspondence
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Other primary sources
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Where commemorated
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Gallantry awards
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Secondary sources
Martin J. Andrews (2003) The Life and Work of Robert Gibbings Bicester: Primrose Hill Press
M Bott (1989) 'The Robert Gibbings Collection in Reading University Library', Matrix, 9 (1989), p55-62 -
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