Page:Dictionary of Artists of the English School (1878).djvu/197

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GIL

with this life, he retained to London, and soon after was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, and acquired a power of correct drawing. His first attempts were as an engraver. In 1784 he published some engravings, after his own designs, in illustration of Goldsmith's 'Deserted Vil- lage/ and among other works of this period he engraved a portrait of Dr. Arne, after Bartolozzi, whose pupil, but more probably assistant, he is said to have been. He also engraved some plates after Lady Spencers drawings. Several of his known plates have fictitious names to them.

His genius, however, led him to carica- ture. His first known essay was in 1779, and straying more and more from the higher branches of art, in which his know- ledge, taste, and feeling qualified him to succeed, he devoted himself entirely to the graphic satire of the politics and morals nf the day. He attacked the 'No Popery ' rioters in 1780; in 1784, Pitt and his Government; then the Westminster elec- tion and the attendant riots, followed by the doings of the Prince of Wales, with numerous hits at the lesser follies of the time. His political partisanship led to an attack upon his house in 1794. His works were the amusement of the day. He seized with ready wit and great power of delinea- tion the points he attacked, and, however grotesque his caricature, preserved the features and character of those he repre- sented, frequently etching his designs at once upon the copper. Upwards of 600 of his engraved works have been collected. Mr. Bohn has published a large selection from them.

He was a man of intemperate habits, and the vice grew upon him. For many years he lived m the nouse of Mrs. Humphreys, his publisher, in St. James's Street, who supplied all his wants on condition that he should not work for any other publisher. Gossip said there was a more tender con- nection between them, but this scandal had no foundation. His latest work is dated in 181 1 . Soon after this his excesses brought on imbecility, with fits of delirium, during an attack of which he threw him- self out of the window. He died June 1, 1815, aged 58, and was buried in St. James's Churchyard, Piccadilly. • GILPIN, Sawrby, R.A., animal painter. He was a descendant of Bernard Gilpin, the eminent English divine, called the * Apostle of^the North,' and was born at Carlisle, November 11, 1733. He was intended for business, and with that view sent to London, but a predilection for art led to his engagement, in May; 1749; as a pupil of Samuel Scott, the marine painter, who then lived in Covent Garden. Here he was diverted from his master's art to sketch the horses bringing supplies to the 176

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market and the groups assembled there. In 1758 he left Mr. Scott to devote himself to animal painting, and went to Newmarket to acquire a knowledge of the horse and of animal anatomy. He was patronised by the Duke of Cumberland, then ranger of Windsor Park, who gave nim apartments, with every facility for his improvement. He was for a time president of the In- corporated Society, and exhibited at the Society's Rooms, in 1763-64, portraits of horses; and in 1770, an oil sketch of

  • Darius obtaining the Persian Empire by

the neighing of nis Horse;' and in the next vear, 'Gulliver taking leave of the Houynnyms,' followed by other subjects of the same class.

These works gained him a reputation. From 1786 to 1807 he was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy, and was elected an associate in 1795, and a full member in 1797. His horses were well drawn, his wild animals spirited and truthful. He painted in conjunction with Barret, R.A.; and Zoffany, R. A. .painted some figures into his pictures. He etched a small book of horses, a set of etchings of oxen, some heads for his brother's ' Lives of the Re- formers,' and the examples of his ' Forest Scenery.' His own * Death of the Fox,' an excellent work, was well engraved by John Scott. He lived many years at Knights- bridge. On the death of his wife, he gave up his house and went to live with his

fenerous friend Mr. Samuel Whitbread, at is seat in Bedfordshire. His health de- clining, he returned to pass the remainder of his life with his daughters at Brompton, where he died March 8, 1807, aged 73.

GILPIN, The Rev. William, M.A., amateur. Brother of the foregoing. Was born in 1724, near Carlisle. He entered Queen's College, Oxford, in 1740, and was ordained in 1746. He was better known as a writer on landscape beauty than as an artist. Though his sketches are by no means without merit, they are, however, mere vigorous tintings of picturesque na- ture, with little drawing or topographical correctness. He for many years kept a large school at Cheam. In addition to several religious works, he published the following on art-subjects — ' Tour down the Wye,' 1782; ' An Essay on Prints,' last edition, 1792; * Northern Tour,' 1792, dedicated to the Queen; * Scotch Tour, 2nd edition, 1792; * Forest Scenery,' 1794 :

  • Three Essays on picturesque "Beauty,

1794; ' Western Tour,' 1798. And the fol- lowing were published after his death: ' Tour on the Coasts of Hants, Sussex, and Kent,' 1804; ' Two Essays on the Author's Mode of Sketching,' 1804; * Observations on parts of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk,' &c, 1809. For the chief of these publications the illustrations were both drawn and en-