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MR. ERIC GILL
ARTIST, CRAFTSMAN, AND
AUTHOR
Mr. Eric Gill A.R.A., who died in an Uxbridge nursing home on Sunday after an operation, was a forceful, refined, and single-minded artist, who had acquired reputation in four distinct branches of practice—sculpture, woodcutting, line engraving, and the design of printing types. He was, moreover, the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles, in which he descanted at large on Catholicism, industrialism, politics, and aesthetics.
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was born at Brighton on February 22, 1882, son of the Rev. A. T. Gill. He studied at Chichester Art School under G. H. Catt, and in 1899 entered the London office of Mr. W. D. Caroë, though he never practised architecture independently. Carved lettering was the first craft he took up, inspired and encouraged by Edward Johnston, whom he met as a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Master and pupil set up house together in Lincoln's Inn, and for nine years Gill was simply a monumental lettering artist, producing inscriptions (and sometimes heraldic shields) for tombstones. But he had already made his first essays in low-relief carving and sculpture in the round.
Settling at Ditchling, Sussex, he worked at sculpture, lettering, and the making of woodcuts, setting up the St. Dominic's Press for the printing of these last and helping to edit a monthly magazine called the Game. In 1911 he met Mr. Augustus John, who helped to arrange his first exhibition, at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea. His development as an artist proceeded side by side with the crystallization of his views on sociology and theology. Beginning his adult life as an agnostic and a Socialist, he moved nearer and nearer to the Church of Rome. A long talk with the Abbot of Louvain had a crucial effect on him, and in February, 1913, he was received into the Loman Communion. Already married, and with several children, he could not attain full membership of a monastic rule, but he became Tertiary of the Order of St. Dominic, and from the time of his reception worked at ropaganda with all the ardour of a convert. He kind of artist he became was largely conditioned by his religious beliefs. In 1913 he was omnissioned to carve the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral, and carried hem out as low reliefs in Hoptonwood stone. Another important work was "The Driving out of the Money Changers," also in low relief, presented by Sir Michael Sadler as a war memorial to the University of Leeds.
Gill was now in the full tide of his fame as a sculptor, graphic artist, and designer of printing types. His graphic work comprised chiefly line engravings and woodcuts, most of the latter being done for Golden Cockerel Press books issued by Mr. Robert Gibbing. Some of his best work was done in the department of lettering. For C. H. St. John Hornby he designed the lettering which is found over all premises of W. H. Smith and Son, and his Gill Sans type fount, a clean, gracefully designed and austere face, had a great vogue, being taken up by the Monotype Company and extensively employed all over the world both for book printing and display work. Gill evolved other types of great beauty, like Perpetua and Bunyan, and often had his manifestos set up squared-off only at the left-hand margin to avoid the breaking up of words at the right—a procedure which made prose look like blank verse. Always an exponent of direct carving, and deprecating the making of clay models for translation into stone, Gill learnt a fine feeling for the quality of his sculptural medium by his long training in monumental lettering. He preferred to work in the flat rather than in the round, and had an exquisite sense of balance and linear rhythm. The same qualities were apparent in his engravings, and to them was superadded (in the woodcuts) a certain whimsical gaucherie recalling the medieval block books.
Gill poured forth a long series of highly literary works on art in its relation to aesthetics, economics, sociology, morals, and religion. He extended his condemnation of the Reformation to the Renaissance itself, for he saw that great release of human thought and endeavour as the prelude to a soul-destroying industrialism. His writing was vigorous and invariably controversial. After leaving Ditchling he had a studio for some time at Capel-y-ffin, in Wales, and then settled at High Wycombe. A heavily bearded, long-robed figure in a bretta, he had a rich flow of argument and invective. Gill was A.R.A., R.D.I., A.R.B.S., honorary A.R.I.B.A., and honorary LL.D. (Edinburgh). Literature about him includes studies by Joseph Thorp and Charles Marriott, by Dr. J. Rothenstein, and essays by G. K. Chesterton, James Laver, and Stanley Casson. He married Mary Ethel, daughter of Mr. H. H. Moore, of Chichester, and by her had one son and three daughters.
There will be a requiem Mass at Pigotts on Thursday at 11 a.m. and the funeral will take place at Speen.

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JUNE-JULY
JACK B. YEATS'S NEW PICTURES
BY PATRICK KAVANAGH.
There was great excitement at the Contemporary Picture Gallery yesterday when Mr. Jack Yeats, the apparently youngest and by far the finest Irish artist, opened his new exhibition.
No wonder we were excited; for in every one of these sixteen pictures there is something of the gay and ridiculous spirit of the poetic and romantic Ireland. Naive wonder, childish enthusiasm, loneliness and a quite unrespectable sense of fun are some of the principal ingredients. His fantastic humour is one of the two million points by which he is to be distinguished from the nest of insects who live in synthetic garrets, and who paint the queerest and most depressing nothings. I feel it is blasphemy to mention such lowly creatures in the same breath with a genius like Jack Yeats, but they do hang around so.
The first question a visitor asks when he looks at a picture is: What is it about? The what-is-it-about is Yeats's weakest point. What is the subject of this one here, No. 3, "Unexpected Death"? Had I not been told that it represents a man lying on a couch, staring out the window and seeing the landscape with the eyes of a dying man, I might never have guessed. But even though I might not be able to tell the subject, the impact of it on me would be just as thrilling. And it is the impact of their egos on us, whether of picture, poem or person, that makes us love or hate or merely leaves us indifferent. Not because of analysis do we fall in love.
And there is that queer stimulation of the spirit which makes artists out of the spectators. That is the real test of all art. What does it do to you? What is its moral effect?
His wonderful and romantic colours are to be found in "Water Lilies," No. 10. A distinguished actress beside me was lamenting the fact that she couldn't afford to buy it, and I shared her sorrow. This is one of the best things in the exhibition. Looking at it is like looking at pictures in a fire. One of the most admired pictures was the "Man in the Train Thinking," which reminds one of a short story of Frank O'Connor's. This work combines best his poetic energy, ideas and romantic colours with a reasonable story.
Then there is his "Night in a Little Town," in which though ideas and emotions are the most important has yet enough of commonplace design to attract a philistine. A man in a bowler hat is standing in the quaint little street of a town in the world of Theatre, where the fairy tale provides its own logic. He is like a man who has suddenly thought of something, maybe a good retort which he didn't make. Or it may be that some one has robbed him. I know that he is up to some devilment. Wonder what it can be. But one thing is certain: he exists and is capable of doing almost anything as the years go by.
Nowadays we have a lot of dullwitted talk about the theatre by harmless old humbugs. But isn't this work the very essence of theatre? Anything may happen and everything is possible. We may stray down some laneway of the artist's surprise and find ourselves sitting on the Great Wall of China. Here is the wayward, vital genius of a child. Ideas like street urchins running about everywhere.
None the less one might sometimes wish that Mr. Yeats gave way a little to our desire to see ideas more clearly realised in symbols of a solider extinkers and "characters" there was something thin and wispy in his world. Nobody could ever have any doubt that his was the authentic message in a city of false alarms. The winds of creation were always blowing. But can the spirit of poetry survive in so diffuse an atmosphere?
Jack Yeats, like his brother the poet, has got that precious essence of reality which is the silver wings of imaginative truth. The Yeatsian distillation is a magic potion that can set a contemporary world drunk with energy, but does it provide any substantial food? I think it has sufficient physicality to carry it into the distant future, but there is always the question.
Just to show us that he can do the orthodox landscape stuff, and do it better than anybody else, there are his "West Shore of Tralee Bay" and "Kerry Mountains."
There is not a picture in this show which hasn't the rare vitality of art. Some people appear to be a bit puzzled. Why shouldn't they be puzzled? Every manifestation of God's Truth is a puzzle. There is no need to be worried because Yeats is sometimes obscure and you do not fully comprehend—if you have an æsthetic sense. And an æsthetic sense is the only thing required to enjoy or criticise a work of art. You may have visited all the galleries of Europe and lodged in the Louyre, but it is useless unless you have sensibility. After that all you need is plenty of money and a reasonably good digestion. In art there are no comparisons. Either a man is or he isn't. Jack Yeats is.
Other pictures which deserve special mention are "The Dark Bathe" and "The 'Bus by the River.'" Nobody should miss this exhibition, for there is no painter in Ireland to-day, or perhaps in Europe, to compare with Jack Yeats.
To be the possessor of a Yeats is to have something that will always be changing, something that may grow into what its creator never dreamt of. These creatures to which he has given life may grow up into heroes or scoundrels, and they may even die of old age. But to-day they live to delight us. No wonder we were as excited as old women at a christening.
33-18
Two Jack Yeats 1941