| [Contents.]
[List of Illustrations] (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) |
BY JOHN COLEMAN ADAMS
| Nature Studies in Berkshire | |
| Photogravure Edition, with 16 illustrations in photogravure. 8º | $4.50 |
| Popular Edition, illustrated | 2.50 |
| William Hamilton Gibson Artist—Naturalist—Author | |
| 8º. Fully illustrated. (By mail $2.15) | net, $2.00 |
| G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS New York and London | |
Frontispiece
William Hamilton Gibson, Age 41
(The autograph was always written without lifting the pen, beginning with the last half of the “H” and ending with the first half)]
William Hamilton Gibson
Artist—Naturalist—Author
By
John Coleman Adams
Author of “Nature Studies in Berkshire,” etc.
Illustrated
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1901
Copyright, 1901
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
Dedicated
to
Emma L. B. Gibson
and
Her Sons
THE MOTIVE
THREE men have done more than any others to inspire our generation with the love of nature. They are Henry D. Thoreau, John Burroughs, and William Hamilton Gibson. Thoreau, when the generation was young, challenged it to come out of doors, live in a shanty, and see as much of the world as he saw. John Burroughs, in later years, has acted as guide to a multitude of minds, eager to be “personally conducted” to field and forest. William Hamilton Gibson, besides winning many feet into those “highways and byways” whose charms he taught us to feel, was fortunate in his exceptional power to bring nature to the very eyes of men in the works of his pencil, with which he made luminous—literally “illustrated”—his pages. This alone would be a justification of some account of his life and work.
But in addition to this claim on the interest of the public, those who knew him are aware of others;—a personality of singular charm and forcefulness; a career quite marvelous in its swift and sure achievements; a genius as rare as it was versatile; a devotion to art and to study which fairly wore him out in its exactions on his energy; an ideal which instructs while it shames our sordidness and materialism. His personality will surely grow upon the American people as time gives a true perspective to his life and work. Already we can see something of his conspicuousness and his right to a place in the foremost group of our nature-prophets. In that great trio, Thoreau is the philosopher, Burroughs the poet and man of letters, Gibson the artist-naturalist. In these days when so many are entering into the inheritance which Gibson helped to secure, it is fitting that nature-lovers should hear the story of his fruitful life.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| [I.] | A Fortunate Boyhood | [1] |
| [II.] | Calling and Election | [24] |
| [III.] | A Quick Success | [49] |
| [IV.] | With Pencil and Brush | [81] |
| [V.] | The Open Eye | [108] |
| [VI.] | The Accident of Authorship | [139] |
| [VII.] | The Workman and his Work | [166] |
| [VIII.] | The Personal Side | [200] |
| [IX.] | Afterglow | [237] |