Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Gill as "the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a letter-cutter and type designer of genius", he is also a figure of considerable controversy following the revelations of his sexual abuse of two of his daughters and of his pet dog.

Gill was born in Brighton and grew up in Chichester, where he attended the local college before moving to London. There he became an apprentice with a firm of ecclesiastical architects and took evening classes in stone masonry and calligraphy. Gill abandoned his architectural training and set up a business cutting memorial inscriptions for buildings and headstones. He also began designing chapter headings and title pages for books.

As a young man, Gill was a member of the Fabian Society, but later resigned. Initially identifying with the Arts and Crafts Movement, by 1907 he was lecturing and campaigning against the movement's perceived failings. He became a Roman Catholic in 1913 and remained so for the rest of his life. Gill established a succession of craft communities, each with a chapel at its centre and with an emphasis on manual labour as opposed to more modern industrial methods. The first of these communities was at Ditchling in Sussex, where Gill established The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic for Catholic craftsmen. Many members of the Guild, including Gill, were also members of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, a lay division of the Dominican Order. At Ditchling, Gill and his assistants created several war memorials including those at Chirk in north Wales and at Trumpington near Cambridge, along with numerous works on religious subjects.

In 1924, the Gill family left Ditchling and moved to an isolated, disused monastery at Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains of Wales. The isolation of Capel-y-ffin suited Gill's wish to distance himself from what he regarded as an increasingly secular and industrialised society, and his time there proved to be among the most productive of his artistic career. At Capel, Gill made the sculptures The Sleeping Christ (1925), Deposition (1925), and Mankind (1927). He created engravings for a series of books published by the Golden Cockerel Press considered among the finest of their kind, and it was at Capel that he designed the typefaces Perpetua, Gill Sans, and Solus. After four years at Capel, Gill and his family moved into a quadrangle of properties at Speen in Buckinghamshire. From there, in the last decade of his life, Gill became an architectural sculptor of some fame, creating large, high-profile works for central London buildings, including both the headquarters of the BBC and the forerunner of London Underground. His mammoth frieze The Creation of Man was the British Government's gift to the new League of Nations building in Geneva. Despite failing health Gill was active as a sculptor until the last weeks of his life, leaving several works to be completed by his assistants after his death.

Gill was a prolific writer on religious and social matters, with some 300 printed works including books and pamphlets to his name. He frequently courted controversy with his opposition to industrialisation, modern commerce, and the use of machinery in both the home and the workplace. In the years preceding World War II, he embraced pacifism and left-wing causes.

Biography

Early life

Eric Gill was born in 1882 in Hamilton Road, Brighton, the second of the 13 children of the Reverend Arthur Tidman Gill and (Cicely) Rose King (died 1929), formerly a professional singer of light opera under the name Rose le Roi. Arthur Tidman Gill had left the Congregational Church in 1878 over doctrinal disagreements and became a minister of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, a grouping of Calvinist Methodists. Arthur was born in the South Seas, where his father, George Gill, was a Congregational minister and missionary. In 1900, Gill became disillusioned with Chichester and moved to London to train as an architect with the practice of W. D. Caröe, specialists in ecclesiastical architecture with a large office close to Westminster Abbey. The calligraphy course was run by Edward Johnston, creator of the London Underground typeface, who became a strong and lasting influence on Gill. After making a copy of a small stone tablet from Westminster Abbey, Gill's first public inscription was for a stone memorial tablet, to a Percy Joseph Hiscock, in Chichester Cathedral. Artists associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, including Emery Walker, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and May Morris, were already based in the area, as were several printers, including the Doves Press. His first sculptures included Madonna and Child (1910), which the art critic Roger Fry described as a depiction of "pathetic animalism", and the almost life-size work now known as Ecstasy (1911). The incestuous relationships between Gill and Gladys that continued during their lives had already begun at this point. Along with his friend and collaborator Jacob Epstein, Gill planned the construction in the Sussex countryside of a colossal, hand-carved monument in imitation of the large-scale structures at Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh. Throughout the second half of 1910 Epstein and Gill would meet on an almost daily basis, but eventually their friendship soured very badly. Earlier in the year they had held long discussions with Rothenstein and other artists, including Augustus John and Ambrose McEvoy, about the formation of a religious brotherhood.

By 1912, while Gill's main source of income was from gravestone inscriptions, he had also carved Madonna figures and was widely assumed, wrongly at that time, to be a Catholic artist. As such he was invited to an exhibition of Catholic art in Brussels and en route stayed for some days at the Benedictine monastery at Mont-César Abbey near Louvain. In February 1913, after religious instruction from English Benedictines, Gill and Ethel were received into the Roman Catholic Church and Ethel changed her name to Mary. Gill was a surprising choice for the commission as he had only recently become a Catholic and had been a sculptor for only three years. He was prepared to do the work more quickly and for a lower fee than more established sculptors would.

thumb|left|upright=1.2|Engraving by Gill from Woodwork published by the St. Dominic Press

Alongside the Guild, Pepler set up the St Dominic's Press with a 100-year old Stanhope press that he bought. Gill also created the memorial at Briantspuddle in Dorset and, with Chute and Hilary Stratton, the monument at South Harting. Beside the main entrance to the British Museum, Gill designed and carved, with Joseph Cribb, the memorial inscription to the museum staff killed in the conflict; for the Victoria and Albert Museum, again with Cribb, he created the war memorial in the entrance hall. Previously, in 1911, Gill had cut the inscription for the foundation stone of the British Museum's new King Edward VII building.

<gallery mode="packed" heights="200">

File:South Harting War Memorial, St. George.jpg|St George, detail of South Harting war memorial, West Sussex

File:Ditchling War Memorial, showing inscription.jpg|Ditchling war memorial, Sussex

File:War Memorial, Chirk (geograph 2343527).jpg|Chirk War Memorial, Wrexham

File:Victoria & Albert Museum staff war memorial.jpg|Victoria & Albert Museum staff war memorial

File:Briantspuddle war memorial close up 2.JPG|Detail of Briantspuddle war memorial, Dorset

</gallery>

Commissioned to produce a war memorial for the University of Leeds, Gill produced a frieze depicting the Cleansing of the Temple but showing contemporary merchants as the money-changers Jesus was driving from the Temple. While fully aware that this was an inappropriate subject for a war memorial and one likely to cause great offence in a commercial centre such as Leeds, Gill persisted with the design nonetheless. The cartoon-like nature of the finished frieze, which included the Hound of St Dominic knocking over a cash till, only added to the ferocity of the resulting uproar.

thumb|Nuptials of God

thumb|Girl in Bath, 1923

Even before the Leeds memorial controversy, Gill's series of illustrations that included the Nuptials of God, The Convert and Divine Lovers and his views on the sexual nature of Christianity were causing alarm within the Catholic hierarchy and distancing Gill from other members of the Ditchling community. A war memorial altarpiece in oak relief for Rossall School was completed in 1927. The Golden Cockerel printed four of Gill's own books and he illustrated a further thirteen works for the press. They had known each other before the First World War and Kessler wanted to persuade Gill to provide some calligraphy for a version of Virgil's Eclogues, which was to be published by Kessler's Cranach Press. Kessler recorded his impressions of his friend in his diary: "He really is an extraordinary and noteworthy personality, with his great artistic talent, utter repudiation of modern commercialism and eccentric piety translated into an all-embracing sensuousness".

While living at Capel-y-ffin, Gill spent many weekends at Robert and Moira Gibbings' home in Waltham St Lawrence, enjoying the couple's unconventional and hedonistic lifestyle. Some years later Kennington offered the work to Whipsnade Zoo. The zoo refused the offer and the work is now in the Tate collection but displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

By 1930 Gladys Gill had divorced her second husband after her first, Ernest Laughton, had been killed in the Battle of the Somme, and she and Eric appear, from his diary entries, to have resumed their incestuous relationship.

The Midland Hotel, Morecambe was built in 1932–33 by the London Midland & Scottish Railway to the Art Deco design of Oliver Hill and included several works by Gill, Marion Dorn, and Eric Ravilious. For the project Gill, with Lawrence Cribb and Donald Potter, produced two seahorses, modelled as Morecambe shrimps, for the outside entrance; a round plaster relief on the ceiling of the circular staircase inside the hotel; a decorative wall map of the north-west of England; and a large stone relief of Odysseus being welcomed from the sea by Nausicaa for the entrance lounge. While working in Morecambe, Gill met May Reeves, who became a regular visitor to Pigotts before moving there to run a small school and becoming Gill's resident mistress for several years. There they carved a stone bas-relief of the meeting of Asia and Africa above the front entrance, together with ten stone reliefs illustrating different cultures, and a gargoyle fountain in the inner courtyard. He also carved stone signage throughout the museum in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Gill's 1935 essay All Art is Propaganda marked a complete reversal of his previous belief that artists should not concern themselves with political activity. In 1934, Gill contributed art to an exhibition mounted by the left-wing Artists' International Association, and defended the exhibition against accusations in The Catholic Herald that its art was "anti-Christian". Gill became a regular speaker at left-wing meetings and rallies throughout the second half of the 1930s. Later, Gill joined the Peace Pledge Union and supported the British branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. In 1938 Gill was commissioned to create a mammoth artwork for the Palace of Nations building in Geneva, as the British Government's gift to the League of Nations.

In 1935, Gill was elected an Honorary Associate of the Institute of British Architects and in 1937 was made a Royal Designer for Industry, the highest British award for designers, by the Royal Society of Arts, and became a founder-member of the RSA's Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry when it was established in 1938. A 1966 biography by Robert Speaight mentioned none of it. Despite the acclaim the book received, and the widespread revulsion towards aspects of Gill's sexual life that followed publication, MacCarthy received some criticism for revealing Gill's incest while Tegetmeier was still living. Others, like Bernard Levin, thought she had been too indulgent towards Gill.

In 1998, a group, Ministers and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, called for Gill's Stations of the Cross to be removed from Westminster Cathedral, leading to a debate within the British Catholic press.

In January 2022, a man climbed the façade of Broadcasting House and damaged the statue of Prospero and Ariel with a hammer, while another man shouted about Gill's paedophilia. Some 2,500 people had previously signed a petition calling on the BBC to take the work down. In May 2023 the statue was again attacked by a man wielding a hammer. Since April 2025, the restored statue has been encased in a protective glass box to prevent further damage. Guildford Cathedral announced in February 2022 that it was considering a 'new interpretation' concerning Gill's statues of John the Baptist and of Christ on the Cross which are on their building. Several organisations, including Save the Children, resolved to stop using typefaces designed by Gill.

When, in 2017, the journalist Rachel Cooke contacted museums holding Gill's work to question what, if any, impact the abuse revelations had on their policy towards showing material by him, the majority refused to engage with her. In 2022 The Observer reported that it appeared that the museum had decided to reduce the prominence given to Gill's work among its exhibits.

Typefaces and inscriptions

In 1909, Gill carved Alphabets and Numerals for a book, Manuscript and Inscription Letters for Schools and Classes and for the Use of Craftsmen, compiled by Edward Johnston. He later gave them to the Victoria and Albert Museum so they could be used by students at the Royal College of Art. In 1914, Gill had met the typographer Stanley Morison, later a typographic consultant for the Monotype Corporation. Commissioned by Morison, he designed the Gill Sans typeface in 1927–30. Gill Sans was based on the sans-serif lettering originally designed for the London Underground. Gill had collaborated with Edward Johnston in the early design of the Underground typeface, but dropped out of the project before it was completed. In 1925, he designed the Perpetua typeface for Morison, with the uppercase based on monumental Roman inscriptions. An in-situ example of Gill's design and personal cutting in the style of Perpetua can be found in the nave of the church in Poling, West Sussex, on a wall plaque commemorating the life of Sir Harry Johnston. In the period 1930–31, Gill designed the typeface Joanna which he used to hand-set his book, An Essay on Typography.

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File:Eric Gill - Alphabets and Numerals (1909) (V%26A).jpg|Alphabets and Numerals (1909)

File:Sir Harry Johnston memorial plaque.JPG|Sir Harry Johnston memorial plaque in the church at Poling, West Sussex

File:Lowestoft Central sign straightened.jpg|British Railways sign at Lowestoft railway station in Gill Sans

</gallery>

Gill's other types include:

  • Golden Cockerel Press Type (for the Golden Cockerel Press; 1929) Designed bolder than some of Gill's other typefaces to provide a complement to wood engravings.
  • Solus (1929) In addition, some designs such as Joanna were released to fine printing use long before they became widely available from Monotype.

One of the most widely used British typefaces, Gill Sans, was used in the classic design system of Penguin Books and by the London and North Eastern Railway and later British Railways, with many additional styles created by Monotype both during and after Gill's lifetime.

Gill was commissioned to develop a typeface with the number of allographs limited to what could be used on Monotype systems or Linotype machines. The typeface was loosely based on the Arabic Naskh style but was considered unacceptably far from the norms of Arabic script. It was rejected and never cut into type.

Published works

thumb|Illustration from the book The Devil's devices, or, Control versus Service by [[Hilary Douglas Clark Pepler|Hilary Pepler, 1915]]

Gill published numerous essays on the relationship between art and religion, and erotic engravings.

Gill's published writings include:

thumb|Songs of Solomon

  • Christianity and Art, 1927
  • Art-nonsense and other essays, Cassell 1929 (pocket edition 1934)
  • Clothes: An Essay Upon the Nature and Significance of the Natural and Artificial Integuments Worn by Men and Women, 1931
  • An Essay on Typography, 1931
  • Beauty Looks After Herself, 1933
  • Unemployment, 1933
  • Money and Morals, 1934
  • Art and a Changing Civilization, 1934
  • Work and Leisure, 1935
  • The Necessity of Belief, 1935
  • Work and Property, 1937
  • Work and Culture, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 1938
  • Twenty-five nudes, 1938
  • And Who Wants Peace?, 1938
  • Sacred and Secular, 1940
  • Autobiography: Quod Ore Sumpsimus
  • Notes on Postage Stamps
  • Christianity and the Machine Age, 1940.
  • On the Birmingham School of Art, 1940
  • Last Essays, 1943
  • A Holy Tradition of Working: passages from the writings of Eric Gill 1983.

Gill provided woodcuts and illustrations for several books including:

  • Facsimile edition published by Christopher Skelton at the September Press, Wellingborough, 1987.
  • The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the four evangelists. Hague & Gill Printers. 1934 Faber & Faber

<gallery>

File:Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (1882 - 1940) - Eve - ABDAG007776 - Aberdeen City Council (Archives, Gallery and Museums Collection).jpg|Eve, 1926

File:Christ on the Cross - Arthur Eric Rowton Gill - ABDAG006172.jpeg|Christ on the Cross

File:Angels Trumpet - Arthur Eric Rowton Gill - ABDAG006170.jpeg|Angels Trumpet

File:Autumn Midnight - Arthur Eric Rowton Gill - ABDAG006169.jpeg|Autumn Midnight, c. 1923

File:Mrs Ruth Lowinsky - Arthur Eric Rowton Gill - ABDAG006173.jpeg|Mrs Ruth Lowinsky

</gallery>

Archives

Gill's reference file of his engraved work, including impressions of almost all the engravings together with some related drawings, was donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum by his widow in 1952. The collection was supplemented by a later donation from Douglas Cleverdon. The collection formed the basis of a catalogue of Gill's engraved work prepared by John Physick and published in 1963.

Gill's papers and library are archived at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA in California, designated by the Gill family as the repository for his manuscripts and correspondence. Some of the books in his collection have been digitised as part of the Internet Archive. Additional archival and book collections related to Gill and his work reside at the University of Waterloo Library Much of Gill's work and memorabilia is held and is on display at the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft.

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Biography of Gill on website of The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, with commentary on his 'unorthodox' interpretation of Catholicism
  • Manuscript & Inscription Letters, Edward Johnston, 1909 (plates by Gill)
  • Portraits of Gill in the National Portrait Gallery, London
  • Portraits by Gill in the National Portrait Gallery, London
  • Prints and drawings by Gill in the British Museum collection
  • Twenty-five Nudes, Gill, 1938 (collected drawings)
  • Troilus and Criseyde, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by George Philip Knapp, 1932
  • Works by Gill in the National Museum Wales collection (woodcuts by Gill)