SKU: 11150
Evelyn Gibbs
(1905 - 1991)
Self Portrait, 1927
£1,200
Evelyn Gibbs (1905 - 1991)
£1,200
Size:
Height – 8.6cm
Width – 12.7cm
1 in stock
Literature: Pauline Lucas, Evelyn Gibbs Artist & Traveller, Five Leaves, 2001, pp 21-31
This self portrait was made whilst Gibbs was at the Royal College of Art, a year before she applied for and won the coveted Rome Scholarship in Engraving. Compositionally it has much in common with, and might have been inspired by, Henry Fuseli’s, Self-portrait of 1770.
Drypoint is a more immediate method of printmaking than
etching, which requires acid to deepen the lines made on the surface
of the metal plate. In drypoint a drawing is made on the plate with an
drypoint needle, scratching the surface in such a way that a soft burr
is produced, giving a characteristic velvety appearance. Generally
only a few prints are made from the plate.
We are grateful to Pauline Lucas and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan for assistance.
Evelyn Gibbs studied at the Liverpool School of Art (1922’26)
and at the Royal College of Art (1926’29).
Credited with making significant gains for women in art and
academia, she was the second woman to win the Prix de Rome for
Engraving (1929) and was elected an associate of the RE in the
same year.
In London, after returning from Rome in 1931, she taught at
a school for handicapped children and later wrote The Teaching of
Art in Schools, which was published in 1934 ‘ the same year she
was appointed lecturer at Goldsmiths College.
She founded the Midland Group of Artists in 1943 after
Goldsmiths was evacuated to Nottingham, and in that September
was commissioned as an official war artist to record Women making
Munitions, working in Blood Transfusion and in the Women’s
Voluntary Service. Seven of the works made during this time are
held in the Imperial War Museum in London. In 1945 she married
Hugh Willatt, later Secretary- General of the Arts Council.
