Robert Gibb RSA

Royal Scottish Academy

The Royal Scottish Academy is a Scottish organisation that promotes contemporary Scottish art. Founded in 1826, as the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, the RSA maintains a unique position in Scotland as an independently funded institution led by eminent artists and...

 (28 October 1845 – 11 February 1932) was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 who was Keeper of the National Gallery of Scotland

National Gallery of Scotland

The National Gallery of Scotland, in Edinburgh, is the national art gallery of Scotland. An elaborate neoclassical edifice, it stands on The Mound, between the two sections of Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens...

 from 1895 to 1907 and was Painter and Limner to the King

Painter and Limner

The Painter and Limner is a member of the Royal Household in Scotland. Appointments of Court Painters are recorded from 1581 onwards, and the post of Painter and Limner was created in 1702 for George Ogilvie. The duties included "drawing pictures of our [the Monarch's] person or of our successors...

 from 1908 until his death. He built his reputation on romantic, historical and particularly military paintings but was also a significant portrait artist.

Born in Lauriston

Lauriston

Lauriston is an area of central Edinburgh, Scotland. The former location of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, the area is undergoing a major re-development known as Quartermile...

, the son of a builder, he studied art at evening classes at the Board of Manufacturers in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 and at the life school of the Royal Scottish Academy

Royal Scottish Academy

The Royal Scottish Academy is a Scottish organisation that promotes contemporary Scottish art. Founded in 1826, as the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, the RSA maintains a unique position in Scotland as an independently funded institution led by eminent artists and...

, and began exhibiting at the RSA in 1867 showing an Arran landscape; this would be the first of no fewer than 143 paintings exhibited at the academy. By the end of the next decade he had begun to establish his reputation as a painter of battles. Following Comrades, his first foray into the military genre, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy. The theme of this painting, a group of three soldiers, one of whom has fallen in the snow, was taken from his painting showing the retreat from Moscow which was shown the following year. He was made a full member following the enormous success of his 1881 painting The Thin Red Line which was inspired by his reading of Alexander Kinglake's book The Invasion of the Crimea. Three years later came Schoolmates depicting two highland officers in the heat of battle, one falling wounded into the arms of the other. He continued painting military scenes throughout the Great War, and his last military painting Backs to the Wall appeared in 1929.

Gibb was also sought after also as a portrait painter and among his subjects were Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer, the Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D., Sir Arthur Halkett, Bart., and the artist's wife, the former Margaret Shennan, second daughter of the Lord Dean of the Guild, who he married in 1885.

The artist died at his residence in Bruntsfield Crescent, Edinburgh in 1932, and he was given a full military funeral with honour guard at his funeral in Warriston Cemetery

Warriston Cemetery

Warriston Cemetery lies in Warriston, one of the northern suburbs of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was built by the then newly formed Edinburgh Cemetery Company, and occupies around of land on a slightly sloping site...

 in Edinburgh on February 15.

Paintings

• Head of Glen-Lester, Arran (1867)
• Visit of William, Lord Russell's Family before his Execution (1872)
• Death of Marmion (1873)
• Columbia in sight of Iona (1874)
• Elaine (1875)
• Margaret of Anjou and the Outlaw (1875)
• Death of St Columba (1876)
• Bridge of Sighs (1877)
• Comrades (1878 - Private Collection)
• Retreat from Moscow (1879 - Private Collection)
• The Thin Red Line
  The Thin Red Line (1854 battle)
  The Thin Red Line was a military action by the Sutherland Highlanders red-coated 93rd Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854, during the Crimean War. In this incident the 93rd aided by a small force of Royal Marines and some Turkish infantrymen, led by Sir Colin Campbell, routed a...
  
  , ( 1881 - National War Museum, Edinburgh
  Edinburgh
  Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
  
  )
• Last Voyage of the Viking, 1883)
• The Sea King (1883)
• Schoolmates (1884 - Private Collection)
• Letters from Home (1885 - destroyed)
• Alma: Advance of the 42nd Highlanders (1889 - Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
  Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
  The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is a museum and art gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. The building houses one of Europe's great civic art collections...
  
  , Glasgow
  Glasgow
  Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
  
  )
• Saving the Colours; the Guards at Inkerman (1895 - Naval and Military Club, London
  London
  London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
  
  )
• Comrades (1878 - Private Collection)
• Comrades (1896 - Black Watch
  Black Watch
  The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland is an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The unit's traditional colours were retired in 2011 in a ceremony led by Queen Elizabeth II....
  
  )
• Hougomont-1815 (1903 - National War Museum, Edinburgh
  Edinburgh
  Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
  
  )
• Dargai, October 20, 1897 (1909 - Private Collection)
• The Red Cross (1913)
• Communion at the Front (1917)
• Backs to the Wall, 1918 (1929 - Arbroath
  Arbroath
  Arbroath or Aberbrothock is a former royal burgh and the largest town in the council area of Angus in Scotland, and has a population of 22,785...
  
  Museum)

Works about

• Gilbert, W. Matthews, "Robert Gibb, R.S.A.", Art Journal 1897, pp. 25-28.
• Harrington, Peter. (1993). - British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, 1700-1914. - London: Greenhill. - ISBN 1853671576
• Harrington, Peter, "The Man who Painted the Thin Red Line", Scots Magazine, Volume 130, No, 6, March 1989, pp. 587-595.
• Obituary, Times, February 13, 1932, p. 12.