Evelyn Gibbs: Artist & Traveller

This biography of Evelyn Gibbs RE marks the tenth anniversary of her death, and is published to coincide with a retrospective touring exhibition of her work, organised by the University of Wales, School of Art at Aberystwyth.

Evelyn Gibbs was a painter and printmaker, portraitist and war artist, etcher and engraver, illustrator of children’s books and pioneer art educationist. She founded the influential Midland Group of Artists, was active in the Artists’ International Association and the Women’s International Art Club. Her book, The Teaching of Art in Schools, remained in print for over thirty years.

Evelyn Gibbs: Artist and Traveller includes her early years in Liverpool, her scholarship at the British School at Rome, and her time as a lecturer at Goldsmiths’ College. Evelyn Gibbs spent the war years in Nottingham, organising public art exhibitions with the AIA and there she married Hugh Willatt (later Secretary-General of the Arts Council). Gibbs was the founder of the Midland Group of Artists, organising major exhibitions of local and national artists. In later years she returned to London, living and working at the Trevelyan Trust studios. Her exhibitions were hugely popular and reviewed nationally, her work ranging from the most exquisite prints of landscape and figures to the late paintings of Gozo’s saltpans. Signed by author. Fine