Grinling Gibbons

Detail from Hampton Court Palace

Detail from Carved Room, Petworth House

Very little is known about his early life. The name Grinling is formed from sections of two family names.

He was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and it is sometimes thought that his father may have been the Englishman Samuel Gibbons, who worked under Inigo Jones, but even two of his closest acquaintances, the portrait painter Thomas Murray and the diarist John Evelyn, cannot agree on how he came to be introduced to King Charles II. He moved to Deptford, England, around 1667, and by 1693 had accepted commissions from the royal family and had been appointed as a master carver.[2] By 1680 he was already known as the "King's Carver", and carried out exquisite work for St Paul's Cathedral, Windsor Castle, and the Earl of Essex's house at Cassiobury. His carving was so fine that it was said a pot of carved flowers above his house in London would tremble from the motion of passing coaches.

The diarist Evelyn first discovered Gibbons' talent by chance in 1671. Evelyn, from whom Gibbons rented a cottage near Evelyn's home in Sayes Court, Deptford (today part of south-east London), wrote the following: "I saw the young man at his carving, by the light of a candle. I saw him to be engaged on a carved representation of Tintoretto's "Crucifixion", which he had in a frame of his own making." Later that same evening, Evelyn described what he had seen to Sir Christopher Wren. Wren and Evelyn then introduced him to King Charles II who gave him his first commission – still resting in the dining room of Windsor Castle.

Gibbons was a member of the Drapers' Company in the City of London, being admitted by patrimony in 1672 and called to the livery in 1685. He was elected to the court and as a warden and then stood for election to be Master in 1718, 1719 and 1720, losing to an alderman each time.[3]

Horace Walpole later wrote about Gibbons: "There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and chained together the various productions of the elements with the free disorder natural to each species."

Gibbons is buried at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London.

One of the many bookcase carvings Gibbons made for the Wren Library, Cambridge

Monument for Admiral Shovell in Westminster Abbey

Detail from Carved Room, Petworth House

Gibbons was employed by Wren to work on St Paul's Cathedral and later was appointed as master carver to George I. He was also commissioned by King William III to create carvings, some of which adorn Kensington Palace today. An example of his work can be seen in the Presence Chamber above the fireplace, which was originally intended to frame a portrait of Queen Mary II after her death in 1694. Also in the Orangery at Kensington, you can see some his pieces. Many fine examples of his work can still be seen in the churches around London – particularly the choir stalls and organ case of St Paul's Cathedral. Some of the finest Gibbons carvings accessible to the general public are those on display at the National Trust's Petworth House in West Sussex, UK. At Petworth the Carved Room is host to a fine and extensive display of intricate wooden carvings by Gibbons.

His work can be seen in the London churches of St Michael Paternoster Royal and St James, Piccadilly, where he carved the wood reredos and marble font. The Anglican dislike of painted altarpieces typically left a large space on the east wall that needed filling, which often gave Grinling's garlands a very prominent position, as here.

In 1682 King Charles II commissioned Gibbons to carve a panel as a diplomatic gift for his political ally Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Cosimo Panel is an allegory of art triumphing over hatred and turmoil and includes a medallion with a low relief of Pietro da Cortona, Cosimo's favourite painter. The panel is housed in the Pitti Palace in Florence. It was recently displayed in the United Kingdom in the Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving exhibition held at the V&A from 22 October 1998 until 24 January 1999.[4]

In 1685 the new king James II asked Gibbons to carve a panel for another Italian ally, the Duke of Modena Francesco II, brother to his second wife Mary of Modena. The Modena Panel is a memento mori for Charles II who died earlier that year and includes a funeral dirge from the play The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses by dramatist James Shirley: "There is no armour against fate; Death lays its icy hand on kings: Sceptre and crown must tumble down". It also features a medallion self-portrait of Gibbons. The panel is displayed in the Estense Gallery in Modena.[5]

St. Peter and St. Paul church in Exton, Rutland, has a fine marble tomb by Gibbons, dating from 1685, showing Viscount Campden with his fourth wife, Elizabeth Bertie, and carvings of his 19 children.[6]

The famous sculptor of Brussels Peter van Dievoet had collaborated with Grinling Gibbons, but went back to Brussels after the revolution of 1688.

Stoning of St Stephen, c. 1680, in the Victoria and Albert Museum

St Michael and All Angels Church, Badminton, has a monument by Gibbons to Henry Somerset, 1st Duke of Beaufort (1629–1700). He was buried alongside his ancestors in the Beaufort Chapel in St George's Chapel, Windsor,[7][8] but the monument was moved to Badminton in 1878.[9] The monument by Gibbons is now on the north side of the chancel at St Michael and All Angels Church, Badminton, and consists of an effigy of the Duke in Garter robes, reclining on a sarcophagus and a plinth with relief of St George and the Dragon. There are twin Corinthian columns with embossed shafts, acanthus frieze, cornice with flaming urns, and the Duke's arms and supporters. At the top, 25 ft from the ground, is a tasseled cushion supporting a coronet; on the plinth are full-length female figures of Justice and Truth. Above the Duke's effigy, parted curtains show the heavenly host with palms and crowns. The Latin inscription displays the names of his family and the many offices he held.[10]

Gibbons also made the monument for Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, a British naval hero killed in a disastrous shipwreck in 1707. Shovell's large marble monument can be seen in the south choir aisle of Westminster Abbey.[11]

Gibbons' work very often includes carvings of peapods. A myth states that he would include a closed pod in his work, only carving it open once he had been paid. If the pea pod was left shut it supposedly showed that he had not been paid for the work.

Gibbons' association with Deptford is commemorated locally: Grinling Gibbons Primary School is in Clyde Street, near the site of Sayes Court in Deptford. Parts of New Cross and Deptford were in the "Grinling Gibbons" council ward from 1978 to 1998.[12]

• Peter Van Dievoet
• Laurence Vander Meulen

• The Carved Cartoon: A Picture of the Past, Austin Clare 1873
• The Work of Grinling Gibbons, Geoffrey Beard, John Murray 1989 ISBN 0-7195-4728-8
• Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving, David Esterly, V&A Publications 2000 ISBN 1-85177-256-1

• Media related to Grinling Gibbons at Wikimedia Commons
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gibbons, Grinling" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.