Gibson Bequest

On 3 February 1919, Joseph Stafford Gibson (1837-1919) died in Madrid. In his Will, the native of Kilmurry, County Cork bequeathed his watercolours and collection of ceramics, engravings, miniatures, silverware, and journals to what is now Crawford Art Gallery. He also gifted a fund of some £14,790 ‘for the furthering of art in the city of his boyhood.’

The principal object of the Bequest was to ensure the preservation of Gibson’s own collections and ‘to add to the art collections’ of the Gallery.

The Gibson Bequest Committee was soon formed to articulate a collecting policy, identify expert advisors, select artists for scholarships, and invest the fund wisely, even patriotically in the case of the national loan. Committee members included artist and headmaster Hugh C. Charde (1858-1946), writer Daniel Corkery (1878-1964), businessman Barry M. Egan (1879-1954), architect Lucius O’Callaghan (1877-1954), artist and second master John Power (1880-1939), as well as a panel of expert advisors that included George Atkinson (1880-1941), Thomas Bodkin (1887-1961), John Lavery (1856-1941), and Dermod O’Brien (1865-1945).

The Gibson Bequest Fund was instrumental in securing the growth and development of Crawford Art Gallery’s collection, particularly in the field of twentieth-century painting, and facilitated the acquisition of hundreds of artworks, including Seán Keating’s Men of the South (1921-22), John Lavery’s The Red Rose (1923), twenty-six works by Harry Clarke, paintings by Muriel Brandt, George Clausen, Patrick Hennessy, Evie Hone, Gerald Festus Kelly, William Orpen, Anne St John Partridge, Nano Reid, Philip Wilson Steer, Jack B. Yeats, prints by Ian Cheyne, John Copley, Ernest Lumsden, Winifred McKenzie, Agnes Miller Parker, John Platt, and Mabel Royds, and sculptures by Jacob Epstein, Séamus Murphy, and Oliver Sheppard, to name but a few. Most of these works were acquired between 1920 and 1960, with fewer following between then and 1980.

Installation view of The Gibson Bequest 1919-2019: Selecting, Collecting & Philanthropy. Photo: Jed Niezgoda.

In 2019, a centenary exhibition, The Gibson Bequest 1919-2019: Selecting, Collecting & Philanthropy, was curated by Dawn Williams and Michael Waldron and held in the Gibson Galleries and Long Room of Crawford Art Gallery. A companion exhibition, Everything Of That Time Might Soon End: The Gibson Bequest – Between the Wars, was held in the Modern Galleries.

Installation view of Everything Of that Time Might Soon End: The Gibson Bequest – Between the Wars. Photo: Jed Niezgoda.