Eric Gill: The Sculpture

by Judith Collins

Artist: Eric Gill
Published: 1998
Publisher: The Overlook Press, New York
Edition: First
Format: Hardback
Height: 28.5 cms
Pages: 240
Illustrations: 20 colour and 330 b&w

£40.00£29.95

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Artists Bio

Eric Gill: The Sculpture

This beautifully illustrated Eric Gill art book is the first ever complete survey of the artist's figural sculpture. With an extensive essay on his works and 300 detailed catalogue entries, it is a significant contribution to contemporary art history. The 350 accompanying photographs, many from the sculptor's own collection, reveal Eric Gill to be one of the major artists of the twentieth century and afford us a fascinating insight into the creativity of this eccentric genius.

(b Brighton, 22 Feb 1882; d Harefield, Middx [now in London], 17 Nov 1940). 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.