Биография Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Погребение Иисуса
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Eric Gill
1882-1940
Article provided by Grove Art Online www.groveart.com
English sculptor, letter-cutter, typographic designer, calligrapher, engraver, writer and teacher. He received a traditional training at Chichester Technical and Art School (1897-1900), where he first developed an interest in lettering. He also became fascinated by the Anglo-Saxon and Norman stone-carvings in Chichester Cathedral. In 1900 Gill moved to London to become a pupil of William Douglas Caröe (1857-1938), architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. He took classes in practical masonry at Westminster Institute and in writing and illuminating at the Central School of Art and Design, where he was deeply influenced by the calligrapher Edward Johnston. Johnston's meticulous training was to be a perfect preparation for Gill's first commissions for three-dimensional inscriptions in stone, the foundation stone for Caröe's St Barnabas and St James the Greater in Walthamstow, London, and the lettering for the lychgate at Charles Harrison Townsend's St Mary's, Great Warley, Essex. Further commissions followed after Gill left Caröe in 1903 to work with E. S. Prior of the Art Workers' Guild. He also undertook his first typographical work, for example for Heal's advertisements.
After his marriage in 1904 to Ethel (later known as Mary) Moore, Gill was elected to the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, and in 1906 he began teaching writing and illumination at the Central School and monumental masonry and lettering for masons at the Paddington Institute. His enthusiasm for stone-carving was increased by visits to Rome (1906), to Bruges and to Chartres Cathedral (1907), which was to be a lasting source of inspiration. In 1907 Gill moved with his family to Ditchling in Sussex, which until 1924 was to be the setting for an artistic community (formalized in 1920 as the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic). Influenced by William Morris, the Guild included Johnston, David Jones, the printer Hilary Pepler and the artist Desmond Chute. At Ditchling Gill encouraged craftsmen to pursue their skills in wood-engraving, calligraphy, weaving, silverwork, stone-carving, carpentry, building and printing. In 1916 Pepler established there the St Dominic's Press, which was to print some of Gill's earliest writings and engravings.
During this period Gill maintained his links with artistic circles in London, developing important friendships with Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, Roger Fry, Augustus John, H. G. Wells, Ananda Coomaraswamy (who introduced him to Hindu philosophy), William Rothenstein and especially Jacob Epstein, with whom he shared an interest in African carving, Indian sculpture and erotic art. In 1910 he worked on the lettering for Epstein's tomb of Oscar Wilde (installed 1912; Paris, Père-Lachaise Cemetery). In the same year he began direct carving of stone figures. These included Madonna and Child (1910; Cardiff, N. Mus.), which Fry described in 1911 as a depiction of ‘pathetic animalism'. Such semi-abstract sculptures showed Gill's appreciation of medieval ecclesiastical statuary, Egyptian, Greek and Indian sculpture, as well as the Post-Impressionism of Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin.
Eight works by Gill were included by Fry in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition (1912-13) at the Grafton Galleries in London, and his growing reputation, together with his conversion to Catholicism (1913), led to a commission from Westminster Cathedral for the Stations of the Cross (14 stone reliefs, h. 1.5 m each, 1914-18; in situ). His Catholicism inspired other biblical works, including the controversial war memorial at the University of Leeds, Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (1922-3), and Creation (8.5×2.1 m, 1937), for the League of Nations building in Geneva. His best-known commission on a secular subject was Prospero and Ariel (1931) for the BBC at Broadcasting House, Langham Place, London.
From 1924 to 1928 Gill and his wife sought to recreate the Ditchling community at Capel y Ffin, a deserted monastic building in the Black Mountains of Wales, though its impracticality and remoteness persuaded them to move nearer to London, to Pigotts, near High Wycombe. At Capel and at Pigotts, Gill worked on carvings, on the writing of pamphlets, essays and books, and on engravings, of which he produced over 1000 during his career. Among his finest achievements in the medium are the engravings for the Golden Cockerel Press at Waltham St Lawrence, near Twyford, Berks (see Bible, fig. 7). Gill's highly original typeface designs (e.g. his ‘Gill Sans', 1927), commissioned in many cases by Stanley Morison of the Monotype Corporation, had a lasting influence on 20th-century printing. In 1938 Gill designed the brick church of St Peter the Apostle at Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk.
Bibliography
E. R. Gill: Bibliography of Eric Gill (London, 1953)
J. F. Physick: The Engraved Works of Eric Gill (London, 1963)
E. R. Gill: The Inscriptional Work of Eric Gill: An Inventory (London, 1964)
R. Speaight: The Life of Eric Gill (London, 1966)
M. Yorke: Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit (London, 1981)
C. Skelton, ed.: The Engravings of Eric Gill (Wellingborough, 1983)
F. MacCarthy: Eric Gill (London, 1989)
Eric Gill: Sculpture (exh. cat. by J. Collins, London, Barbican A.G.; Newtown, Oriel 31; Leeds, C.A.G.; 1992-3) [incl. Gill's essays ‘Sculpture' (1927) and ‘The Future of Sculpture' (1929)]
STEPHEN STUART-SMITH