(Arthur) Eric Rowton Gill ARA, Hon ARIBA

Born 22 February 1882
Died 17 November 1940

Active: 1897 - 1940

Country of birth and death: England

Sculptor, woodworker, engraver, draughtsman, architect, letter-cutter and type designer

Born at 32 Hamilton Road, Brighton, Sussex. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Tidman Gill (1848–1933), minister of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, a Calvinist Methodist church and later of the Church of England. Eric attended a local kindergarten and then Arnold House School, Hove. When the family moved to Chichester in 1897, Gill studied at Chichester Technical and Art School.

Between 1900-04 Gill trained as an architect in the office of William Douglas Caroe (1857-1938), architect to the ecclesiastical commissioners. During this time he took classes in masonry at Westminster Technical Institute and calligraphy at Central School of Arts and Crafts. From 1902 Gill shared rooms with Edward Johnson, his tutor in lettering and calligraphy at Central. In 1904 Gill gave up his pupillage and married Ethel Hester Moore (1878–1961) who he had met whilst a student in Chichester. After a brief period living in a small tenement flat in Battersea Bridge Buildings, Gill and his family took a house in Hammersmith. He was teaching at Central School and Paddington Institute and had already received a number of commissions, including one for lettering from a German client, Count Harry Kessler. Gill took on first apprentice, Joseph Cribb, at this time.

In 1907 Gill established his home and workshop in Ditchling, Sussex. After spending a short time as an apprentice to Aristide Maillol he returned to Sussex. In January 1911 Gill had his first solo exhibition of sculptures at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea which was a critical success and led to further sales and commissions. In 1913, he converted to Catholicism and moved to Ditchling Common attracting other Catholic craft workers to settle nearby. This was later developed into The Guild of Saints Joseph and Dominic and had forty-one members by 1922. Meanwhile Gill continued to develop the stone carving side of his practice as well as his graphic work, particularly lettering and engraving. In 1915 Douglas (later Hilary) Pepler moved from Hammersmith to Ditchling Common and established St Dominic's Press. Over the next few years, Gill worked with Pepler contributing engravings and texts for the new private press. Towards the end of the First World War Gill worked as a driver in the RAF mechanical transport camp at Blandford, Dorset. In 1918 he took on Desmond Chute as an apprentice-assistant and they worked together until 1927.

In 1924 Gill resigned from the Guild of Saints Joseph and Dominic and moved to a former Benedictine monastery at Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains, Wales. Here he continued to carve, although the workshop facilities were small in comparison to Ditchling. Gill also began printing his own engravings and collaborated with Robert Gibbings, proprietor of the Golden Cockerel Press. Four years later, in 1928, Gill made his final move to Pigotts, near High Wycombe. This marked the beginning of his greatest critical and financial success. At Pigotts, Gill took on many more apprentices who worked in a more formal teacher-pupil relationship with him. These included: Donald Potter, Walter Ritchie, David Kindersley, Ralph Beyer and John Skelton. Gill's health declined during the 1930s and he died of cancer at Harefield Hospital, Uxbridge in 1940.

Gill was a prolific artist, among his many commissions were: fourteen carved stone stations of the cross for Westminster Cathedral (1913); Bryantspuddle war memorial (1918); Chirk and South Harting war memorials (1919); Trumpington war memorial, near Cambridge (1921); New College, Oxford was memorial (1921); stations of the cross for St Cuthbert's Church, Bradford (1921); Leeds University war memorial 'Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple' (1923); war memorial altarpiece in oak relief for Rossall School (1927); reliefs on London Underground headquarters, St James's Park (1928-9); figures of Prospero and Ariel for BBC headquarters in Langham Place (begun in 1931); reliefs on the new archaeological museum, Jerusalem (1934); stations of the cross for St Alban's, Oxford (1938); St John the Baptist for Guidlford Cathedral (1939); and the stone altarpiece for the English martyrs in St George's Chapel, Westminster Cathedral which was completed posthumously (installed in 1947).

He also designed a number of typefaces several of which are among the most widely used of the twentieth century: Perpetua (1925); Gill Sans-serif (1927 onwards); Solus (1929); Golden Cockerel Roman (1930); Joanna (1930); Aries (1932); Jubilee (1934); and Bunyan (1934), a version of which was issued under the name Pilgrim by Linotype in 1953.

Wealth at death: £7,568 15s. 5d.
Probate date: 18 August 1942

Citing this record

'(Arthur) Eric Rowton Gill ARA, Hon ARIBA', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1207251323, accessed 21 Mar 2023]