GILBERT, SIR JOHN (1817-1897), English painter and illustrator, one of the eight children of George Felix Gilbert, a member of a Derbyshire family, was born at Blackheath on the 21st of July 1817. He went to school there, and even in childhood displayed an extraordinary fondness for drawing and painting. Nevertheless, his father’s lack of means compelled him to accept employment for the boy in the office of Messrs Dickson & Bell, estate agents, in Charlotte Row, London. Yielding, however, to his natural bent, his parents agreed that he should take up art in his own way, which included but little advice from others, his only teacher being Haydon’s pupil, George Lance, the fruit painter. This artist gave him brief instructions in the use of colour. In 1836 Gilbert appeared in public for the first time. This was at the gallery of the Society of British Artists, where he sent drawings, the subjects of which were characteristic, being “The Arrest of Lord Hastings,” from Shakespeare, and “Abbot Boniface,” from The Monastery of Scott. “Inez de Castro” was in the same gallery in the next year; it was the first of a long series of works in the same medium, representing similar themes, and was accompanied, from 1837, by a still greater number of works in oil which were exhibited at the British Institution. These included “Don Quixote giving advice to Sancho Panza,” 1841; “Brunette and Phillis,” from The Spectator, 1844; “The King’s Artillery at Marston Moor,” 1860; and “Don Quixote comes back for the last time to his Home and Family,” 1867. In that year the Institution was finally closed. Gilbert exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1838, beginning with the “Portrait of a Gentleman,” and continuing, except between 1851 and 1867, till his death to exhibit there many of his best and more ambitious works. These included such capital instances as “Holbein painting the Portrait of Anne Boleyn,” “Don Quixote’s first Interview with the Duke and Duchess,” 1842, “Charlemagne visiting the Schools,” 1846. “Touchstone and the Shepherd,” and “Rembrandt,” a very fine piece, were both there in 1867; and in 1873 “Naseby,” one of his finest and most picturesque designs, was also at the Royal Academy. Gilbert was elected A.R.A. 29th January 1872, and R.A. 29th June 1876. Besides these mostly large and powerful works, the artist’s true arena of display was undoubtedly the gallery of the Old Water Colour Society, to which from 1852, when he was elected an Associate exhibitor, till he died forty-five years later, he contributed not fewer than 270 drawings, most of them admirable because of the largeness of their style, massive coloration, broad chiaroscuro, and the surpassing vigour of their designs. These qualities induced the leading critics to claim for him opportunities for painting mural pictures of great historic themes as decorations of national buildings. “The Trumpeter,” “The Standard-Bearer,” “Richard II. resigning his Crown” (now at Liverpool), “The Drug Bazaar at Constantinople,” “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Turkish Water-Carrier” are but examples of that wealth of art which added to the attractions of the gallery in Pall Mall. There Gilbert was elected a full Member in 1855, and president of the Society in 1871, shortly after which he was knighted. As an illustrator of books, magazines and periodicals of every kind he was most prolific. To the success of the Illustrated London News his designs lent powerful aid, and he was eminently serviceable in illustrating the Shakespeare of Mr Howard Staunton. He died on the 6th of October 1897.
(F. G. S.)
GILBERT, SIR JOSEPH HENRY (1817-1901); English chemist, was born at Hull on the 1st of August 1817. He studied chemistry first at Glasgow under Thomas Thomson; then at University College, London, in the laboratory of A. T. Thomson (1778-1849), the professor of medical jurisprudence, also attending Thomas Graham’s lectures; and finally at Giessen under Liebig. On his return to England from Germany he acted for a year or so as assistant to his old master A. T. Thomson at University College, and in 1843, after spending a short time in the study of calico dyeing and printing near Manchester, accepted the directorship of the chemical laboratory at the famous experimental station established by Sir J. B. Lawes at Rothamsted, near St Albans, for the systematic and scientific study of agriculture. This position he held for fifty-eight years, until his death on the 23rd of December 1901. The work which he carried out during that long period in collaboration with Lawes was of a most comprehensive character, involving the application of many branches of science, such as chemistry, meteorology, botany, animal and vegetable physiology, and geology; and its influence in improving the methods of practical agriculture extended all over the civilized world. Gilbert was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society in 1860, and in 1867 was awarded a royal medal jointly with Lawes. In 1880 he presided over the Chemical Section of the British Association at its meeting at Swansea, and in 1882 he was president of the London Chemical Society, of which he had been a member almost from its foundation in 1841. For six years from 1884 he filled the Sibthorpian chair of rural economy at Oxford, and he was also an honorary professor at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. He was knighted in 1893, the year in which the jubilee of the Rothamsted experiments was celebrated.
GILBERT, MARIE DOLORES ELIZA ROSANNA [“Lola Montez”] (1818-1861), dancer and adventuress, the daughter of a British army officer, was born at Limerick, Ireland, in 1818. Her father dying in India when she was seven years old, and her mother marrying again, the child was sent to Europe to be educated, subsequently joining her mother at Bath. In 1837 she made a runaway match with a Captain James of the Indian army, and accompanied him to India. In 1842 she returned to England, and shortly afterwards her husband obtained a decree nisi for divorce. She then studied dancing, making an unsuccessful first appearance at Her Majesty’s theatre, London, in 1843, billed as “Lola Montez, Spanish dancer.” Subsequently she appeared with considerable success in Germany, Poland and Russia. Thence she went to Paris, and in 1847 appeared at Munich, where she became the mistress of the old king of Bavaria, Ludwig I.; she was naturalized, created comtesse de Landsfeld, and given an income of £2000 a year. She soon proved herself the real ruler of Bavaria, adopting a liberal and anti-Jesuit policy. Her political opponents proved, however, too strong for her, and in 1848 she was banished. In 1849 she came to England, and in the same year was married to George Heald, a young officer in the Guards. Her husband’s guardian instituted a prosecution for bigamy against her on the ground that her divorce from Captain James had not been made absolute, and she fled with Heald to Spain. In 1851 she appeared at the Broadway theatre, New York, and in the following year at the Walnut Street theatre, Philadelphia. In 1853 Heald was drowned at Lisbon, and in the same year she married the proprietor of a San Francisco newspaper, but did not live long with him. Subsequently she appeared in Australia, but returned, in 1857, to act in America, and to lecture on gallantry. Her health having broken down, she devoted the rest of her life to visiting the outcasts of her own sex in New York, where, stricken with paralysis, she died on the 17th of January 1861.
See E. B. D’Auvergne, Lola Montez (New York, 1909).
GILBERT, NICOLAS JOSEPH LAURENT (1751-1780), French poet, was born at Fontenay-le-Château in Lorraine in 1751. Having completed his education at the college of Dôle, he devoted himself for a time to a half-scholastic, half-literary life at Nancy, but in 1774 he found his way to the capital. As an opponent of the Encyclopaedists and a panegyrist of Louis XV., he received considerable pensions. He died in Paris on the 12th of November 1780 from the results of a fall from his horse. The satiric force of one or two of his pieces, as Mon Apologie (1778) and Le Dix-huitième Siècle (1775), would alone be sufficient to preserve his reputation, which has been further increased by modern writers, who, like Alfred de Vigny in his Stello (chaps. 7-13), considered him a victim to the spite of his philosophic opponents. His best-known verses are the Ode imitée de plusieurs psaumes, usually entitled Adieux à la vie.
Among his other works may be mentioned Les Familles de Darius et d’Éridame, histoire persane (1770), Le Carnaval des auteurs (1773), Odes nouvelles et patriotiques (1775). Gilbert’s Œuvres complètes were first published in 1788, and they have since been edited by Mastrella (Paris, 1823), by Charles Nodier (1817 or 1825), and by M. de Lescure (1882).