ANTHONY GILBERT (1916–1995)

One of the last great designers and illustrators of the golden age of British advertising, Gilbert trained at Goldsmith’s College before joining the firm of J. Walter Thompson around 1943. For the next 25 years, he contributed designs to some of the most high profile advertising campaigns of the post-war era, the most enduring of which, the rococo mantel clock for After Eight mints, is still used by Nestlé. But throughout his entire career, Gilbert also painted his own work and took on independent commissions. From the late 1940s into the 1950s, his bold, graphic, “naïve” designs graced the covers and pages of The Strand, Lilliput, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, House and Garden and the Radio Times.

Shortly after he was elected a member of the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA), Gilbert was commissioned to design murals for the 1951 Festival of Britain and met a young Scottish-Italian designer named Willie Landels, who, in a 1996 interview with Messum’s, said: “Anthony was vastly talented, his excellence was unique, he had enormous taste – too much really to be a successful painter.”

After he retired from advertising, Gilbert, who was never concerned with self-promotion, might not have continued his career, were it not for the immense support and inspiration of his wife, Ann. Stylish and elegant, Ann first met Gilbert as his student at Bromley School of Art, and she later also made designs for JWT. Ann became not only Gilbert’s lifelong model and muse (indeed, after their marriage, he never drew anyone else), but also his assistant. She travelled regularly to London

from their Kent home to collect fashions from the offices of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, which she then modeled for Gilbert’s illustrations before returning them along with the completed artwork.

Gilbert and Ann later moved to Charlbury in Oxfordshire, where they filled their home with the textiles, ceramics, and Japanese lacquer-work furniture that appear in so many of his later still lifes and interior scenes, works that express the power of everyday objects, as well as Gilbert’s superb sense of composition and innate chic.

Methodical by nature, in his later work Gilbert often favoured a kind of gouache-resist technique known as the ‘wash-off’, which he had perfected at JWT. By this method, he first drew the image in pencil on card or watercolour paper before covering it with a pale wash to create a unifying base. He then brushed Chinese white or gouache to mask any areas to remain light, and when dry, covered the entire image with India or acrylic ink. After rinsing the paper to remove the gouache and any unwanted ink, he then dried and blocked the finished sheet. The resulting works appear somewhat like woodblock prints, but are nevertheless unique images. Gilbert used the ‘wash-off’ technique in a variety of subject matter, but especially in his ‘Patterned Ladies’, a series inspired stylistically by Taisho Period (1911–1926) fashion prints, but above all, by his admiration of Ann. It is in no small part due to her tireless support that Anthony Gilbert achieved such an elegantly distinct and prolific body of work.

Andrea Gates Art Historian and Archivist for Messum’s

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7. Red Striped Sleeves coloured pen 24.5 x 17 cms 9 5⁄8 x 6 3⁄4 ins

6. Brown and Red Patterned Lady, VI ’77 coloured pen 23 x 16 cms 9 x 6 1⁄4 ins

18. Forgive And Forget wash off 21.5 x 16 cms 8 1⁄2 x 6 1⁄4 ins

20. White Lady wash off 36.5 x 17 cms 14 3⁄8 x 6 3⁄4 ins

19. Pride Goes Before A Fall wash off 19.5 x 10 cms 7 5⁄8 x 3 7⁄8 ins

21. Patterned Lady monotype 31 x 12.5 cms 12 1⁄4 x 4 7⁄8 ins

28. Flowered Pattern, Japanese Anemonies découpe 39 x 34 cms 15 3⁄8 x 13 3⁄8 ins

29. Japanese Anenomies découpe 45 x 36 cms 17 3⁄4 x 14 1⁄8 ins

53. Still Life with Mug, Vase and Bowl (unfinished) pen 46 x 30 cms 18 1⁄8 x 11 3⁄4 ins

54. Still Life with Chair pen and pencil 48 x 36 cms 18 7⁄8 x 14 1⁄8 ins