Charles Allan Gilbert | |
|---|---|
 Silhouette self-portrait of C. Allan Gilbert published in 1916 | |
| Born | (1873-09-03)September 3, 1873 Hartford, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Died | April 20, 1929(1929-04-20) (aged 55) New York, U.S. |
| Education | Art Students League of New York |
| Known for | Illustration, animation, camouflage art |
| Notable work | All Is Vanity (1892) |
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Charles Allan Gilbert (September 3, 1873 – April 20, 1929), better known asC. Allan Gilbert, was an Americanillustrator. He is especially remembered for a widely published drawing (amemento mori orvanitas) titledAll Is Vanity. The drawing employs a double image (orvisual pun) in which the scene of a woman admiring herself in a mirror of hervanity table, when viewed from a distance, appears to be ahuman skull. The title is also a pun, as this type of dressing-table is also known as avanity. The phrase "All is vanity" comes fromEcclesiastes 1:2 ("Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.")[1] It refers to the vanity and pride of humans. In art, vanity has long been represented as a woman preoccupied with her beauty. And art that contains a human skull as a focal point is called a memento mori (Latin for "reminder of death"), a work that reminds people of theirmortality.
It is less widely known that Gilbert was an early contributor toanimation,[2] and acamouflage artist (or camoufleur) for theU.S. Shipping Board duringWorld War I.[3]
Born inHartford, Connecticut, Gilbert was the youngest of the three sons of Charles Edwin Gilbert and Virginia Ewing Crane. As a child, he was an invalid (the circumstances of which are unclear), with the result that he often made drawings for self-amusement (Leonard 1913).
At age sixteen, he began to study art withCharles Noel Flagg, the officialportrait painter for the State ofConnecticut, who had also founded the Connecticut League of Art Students. In 1892, he enrolled at theArt Students League of New York, where he remained for two years. In 1894, he moved to France for a year, where he studied withJean-Paul Laurens andJean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Academie Julien in Paris (New York Times 1913).
Returning from Paris, Gilbert settled in New York, where he embarked on an active career as an illustrator of books, magazines, posters and calendars. His illustrations were frequently published inScribner's,Harper's,Atlantic Monthly and other leading magazines. It was earlier, while he was still a student at the Art Students' League, that he completedAll Is Vanity, the drawing that became popular when it was initially published inLife magazine in 1902.
In the course of his artistic career, Gilbert illustrated a large number of books, among themEllen Glasgow'sLife and Gabriella (1916),H.G. Wells'The Soul of a Bishop (1917),Gouverneur Morris'His Daughter (1919),Edith Wharton'sThe Age of Innocence (1920), andBooth Tarkington'sGentle Julia (1922). He also published collections of his own drawings, includingOverheard in the Whittington Family,Women of Fiction,All is Vanity,The Honeymoon,A Message from Mars, andIn Beauty's Realm.
As an early contributor to animated films (Grant, p. 49), Gilbert worked forJohn R. Bray in 1915–16 on the production of a series of movingshadow plays calledSilhouette Fantasies. TheseArt Nouveau-styled films, which were made by combining filmedsilhouettes with pen-and-ink components, were serious interpretations ofGreek myths (Crafton 1993, p. 865; Bachman 2002, pp. 261–262).
During World War I, Gilbert served as a camouflage artist for the U.S. Shipping Board (theEmergency Fleet Corporation), as did other well-known artists and illustrators, includingMcClelland Barclay,William MacKay, andHenry Reuterdahl (Behrens 2009). As did they, he also illustrated posters for American wartime programs such asLiberty Bonds (or Liberty Loans).
Throughout his life (and still today), Gilbert was so strongly identified with his drawingAll Is Vanity that he is sometimes mistakenly credited with two other popular double image artworks,Gossip: And the Devil Was There, andSocial Donkey, both of which were apparently made by another illustrator of the same time period,George A. Wotherspoon.
Gilbert continued to live in New York during the remainder of his life, but he often spent his summers onMonhegan Island inMaine. He died in New York of pneumonia at age 55.
Media related toCharles Allan Gilbert at Wikimedia Commons