Harold Gilman
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The British artist Harold John Wilde Gilman (Rode, Somerset, 11 Feb 1876 - London, 12 Feb 1919) was a founder-member of the Camden Town Group. He died in the influenza epidemic of 1918-19.
[edit] Life
Developing an interest in art during a childhood convalescence period, he began his artistic training after a non-collegiate year at Oxford University (again cut short by ill health) and time working as a tutor to an English family living in Odessa. Studying at the Hastings School of Art (1896) and then the Slade School of Fine Art (1897–1901), he then spent over a year studying the Spanish masters (Velázquez as well as Whistler were major early influences) and meeting and marrying the American painter Grace Cornelia Canedy. Moving back to London, where they settled (apart from an abortive trip to visit her family in Chicago, in which Gilman ducked pressure to join the Canedy family business), they had two daughters (one in London, one in Chicago).
Meeting Walter Sickert in 1907, Gilman became a founder member of both the Fitzroy Street Group (in 1907) and the Camden Town Group (in 1911). In the meantime he joined the Allied Artists' Association, moved to Letchworth, and began to show influence from work of Vuillard as well as Sickert. He soon outpaced Sickert's understanding of post-Impressionism and moved out from under his shadow, however, using ever stronger colour and identifying with Charles Ginner as a 'Neo-Realist' (exhibiting with Ginner under that label in 1914). Remarrying in 1917, in 1918 he was commissioned to travel to Nova Scotia by the Canadian War Records.
[edit] Reception
Exhibitions were devoted to him at the Tate in 1954 and 1981, and he also featured in its 2007-08 Camden Town Group retrospective.
[edit] External links
- Harold Gilman paintings at Tate Britain
- Harold Gilman at Grove Art Online
- Harold Gilman in the Dictionary of National Biography
