The Victorian artist Sir John Gilbert was often defiantly behind the times. Not for him a celebration of the era’s technological leaps. One of the few signs of contemporary life you’ll see in this survey is in a small painting of Worcester, completed in 1860. Gilbert depicts the railway and a factory but, perhaps signalling trouble ahead, paints the cathedral under gathering clouds.
Like many British artists of the period, Gilbert’s preferred subject matter was more reassuringly ancient: scenes drawn from literature – particularly the works of Shakespeare – or, more generally, knights and damsels, wistful and with a mystical connection to the landscape. Some examples, like ‘The Lost Route’ (1894), are impressively febrile. Others, such as ‘The Enchanted Forest’ (1886) – as kitsch an example of Victorian fairy painting as you could wish to see – hardly help to qualify Gilbert for reappraisal, or do much to challenge the impression of him as a minor figure who shared interests with the pre-Raphaelites (but, by all accounts, disapproved of them).
Yet this prolific artist is more complicated and engaging than he at first appears. For one, his popularity was predicated on the technological advances he seemed to guard against. In 1842, he was appointed principal illustrator for the Illustrated London News and went on to contribute tens of thousands of images for publications whose success lay in the development of the steam press and printing on an industrial scale. A few examples of his commercial work, such as Victoria and Albert at a ball, are on display but the show could be more equally divided between the different strands of Gilbert’s career – fleshing out the curious image of a man responding swiftly to current events while seeking respite from the day job in scenes of yore.