J.S. Gibson

Joseph Stafford Gibson (1837-1919) was born at Kilmurry, County Cork into a family of Cork silversmiths and military servicemen, his father having served in the Peninsular Wars. Orphaned by the age of eleven, he was raised by an aunt in Cork city. Having attended Queen’s College Cork (now University College Cork), he lived for a time in London and Paris, before settling in Madrid in 1879.

Describing himself as a painter, Gibson appears to have been independently wealthy, likely as a result of family legacies and investments in government loans and railways. A full chapter of Gente del 98 (1952), a memoir by Spanish artist and writer Ricardo Baroja (1871-1953), focuses on Gibson.

He travelled extensively in France, Switzerland, and Spain, during which he made hundreds of watercolours, although he seemingly never exhibited them during his lifetime. He was in France during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and Paris Commune (1871). Upon moving to Madrid, he lived at Calle de la Aduana 27, close to the Puerta del Sol. From the 1880s until at least 1907, he was a regular visitor to the medieval Spanish town of Albarracín in Teruel. Evidently travel – and the opportunities it afforded the individual, particularly artists – was of especial significance to him and this is borne out in the instructions he set down in his Will and which now lay the foundation for the Gibson Travelling Fellowship Award.

CAG.1228 Joseph Stafford Gibson, Portrait of a Bearded Gentleman (full face), 1895,
egg yolk and ink on paper, 28.3 x 14.6 cm. Bequeathed, Joseph Stafford Gibson, 1919 (Gibson Bequest).

For many years, Gibson maintained a correspondence with James Brenan (1839-1907), artist and principal of Crawford Municipal School of Art (1860-89) and, subsequently, Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (1889-1904), while also writing to such political figures as Arthur Balfour (1848-1930).

A collector in his own right of decorative Spanish earthenware, historic coins, family silverware, paintings, and other objects, Joseph Stafford Gibson died in Madrid on 3 February 1919 during the influenza pandemic.