From the Archives

William Hamilton Gibson

This July marked the 125th anniversary of the death of William Hamilton Gibson (1850-1896), a renowned naturalist, painter, author, and alumnus, Class of 1866. We looked into the Paula and George Krimsky ’60 Archives and Special Collections to learn more about Gibson and how he viewed the natural world.

“Son of a New York financier with a summerhouse in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, ‘Willie’ Gibson distinguished himself early as an observer and painter of nature,” according to a biography by the late Paula Gibson Krimsky, longtime School Archivist and the artist’s great-granddaughter. Though self-taught, he was known for his meticulous depiction of the natural world.

Gibson came to what was then The Gunnery in 1882, and according to a family story, Mr. Gunn “wrote to his father that he ‘sent Willie out into the woods to paint and excused him from Latin grammar because it is a talent at which he excels.’” In a letter to Gibson’s mother, dated 1864, Mr. Gunn wrote that her son was “always painting, drawing, when he should be studying, but meeting William Hamilton Gibson, from the Paula and George Krimsky Archives and Special Collections

all reproofs with that winsome smile.”

“His interest in nature was strongly encouraged and developed through a series of botany classes he took while at the school, but he was left alone to pursue his enthusiasm in art; at the time Mr. Gunn offered no such art class, but undoubtedly encouraged Gibson’s interest,” Alyse Dufour ’07 wrote in her Gunn Scholar project, “A Place Called Home: The Pastoral in the Photography and Art Work of William Hamilton Gibson (1866) as Understood and Interpreted.” As part of her project, Dufour made prints from Gibson’s glass negatives, which were loaned to the archives by the Gibson family, “tracing their evolution into book illustrations and paintings,” and assembling an exhibition of his original work paired

Gibson and his wife, Emma Blanchard, had three children: Hamilton, who graduated from The Gunnery in 1902 and became the school’s third headmaster; Dana, who died in a hunting accident in 1911; and a daughter, Elizabeth, (not pictured) who later married Tertius van Dyke.

with her own photographs of Washington landscapes, Krimsky said. After leaving The Gunnery in 1866, Gibson enrolled in the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, but his education was cut short following the death of his father two years later. Following a brief stint in the insurance industry, and with no formal training as an artist, Gibson launched himself headlong into a career as an artist. After approaching Harper’s publishing with a few of his drawings to sell, the head of the art department told him, in essence, he would never succeed as an artist, Dufour recounted in her report. Undeterred, Gibson won his first, large commission from Appleton & Co., and by 1873, was earning money regularly for his artwork.

His first book, “The Complete American Trapper,” which he wrote and illustrated, was published in 1876. The editor of Harper’s Monthly subsequently encouraged Gibson to write about and illustrate his summer sojourns in Sandy Hook and Washington, Connecticut, Dufour said. Those stories and illustrations became a book, “Pastoral Days,” published in 1881. It included accounts of Mr. Gunn and his school, affectionately depicted as Mr. Snug and the Snuggery.

In all, Gibson was the author and illustrator of 10 books about nature, as well as the editor and illustrator of “The Master of The Gunnery,” a memorial tribute to Mr. Gunn written by

An illustration of Judd’s Bridge in Washington, by W.H. Gibson One of the only candid photographs of Gibson in the archives. Handwritten on the back it says, “Frolic on the Brownley lawn, summer of 1889; Will Gibson and his wonderful steed.”

A photograph of the Shepaug RIver by W.H. Gibson, printed from his original glass negative by Alyse Dufour ’07 for her Gunn Scholar project

his students. “Gibson later took up residence in Washington and maintained close ties to the Gunn family,” Krimsky said, noting that he built a summer cottage, “The Sumacs,” designed by another Gunn alumnus, Ehrick Rossiter, Class of 1871. In the 1940s, Gibson’s studio became the home of The Gunnery’s third headmaster, and Gibson’s son, Hamilton Gibson, Class of 1902, and later his grandson, R. Dana Gibson ’32, Krimsky said.

A memorial to Gibson, a bronze medallion attributed to sculptor Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, was mounted on a large stone overlooking Green Hill Road upon his death in 1896 and remains there today.

Background: In a letter to his father, dated June 2, 1862, Gibson wrote, “I was so glad to get a letter that I told about every boy in the house of it. I should like to get one from you or mother. I am not homesick yet, so you need not be afraid.” To this, Frederick Gunn added a note to Gibson’s father, saying “Willie is a dear little fellow, just as good as he can be.”