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sketcher, lithographer and draughtsman, was born in London, son of Thomas Gilks, an officer at the West India Docks. In 1836 he was apprenticed for seven years to Thomas Dean, a well-known lithographer of Threadneedle Street, London. From about 1844 to about 1850 he was in partnership with his brother Thomas, a wood-engraver, then worked on his own account until departing for Victoria in October 1852. During this period he taught art, both privately and at the City of London Mechanics Institute. Gilks and his wife, Elizabeth, née Grant, arrived at Melbourne in the Alipore on 19 January 1853. He set up business as a lithographer at 87 Flinders Lane East, later being listed at 93 Flinders Lane East. In April 1853 he and his wife, a wax modeller, attended a meeting to found the Victorian Fine Arts Society and he was appointed to the interim committee, although he does not seem to have exhibited in the society’s August exhibition. At the Melbourne Exhibition the following year, however, he showed several works, including a design for a new Government House and a view of the Exhibition Building, both of which he lithographed and published as prints. At about this time he also published his lithograph of the University of Melbourne and illustrated The Adventures of George Temple the Goldseeker , published by J.J. Blundell. Watercolour and pencil drawings of Melbourne and its surrounding scenery executed in the mid 1850s, some signed and dated, are in the Mitchell Library.

In April 1855 Gilks was appointed lithographic draughtsman in the Department of Crown Lands. He resigned in April 1858 and again set up his own business, at 84 Little Collins Street West. This was not successful and he became insolvent the following November, after which he managed to secure temporary employment back at the Crown Lands Department and with the Geological Survey in 1860 as well as working privately. His lithographic view of the Intercolonial Cricket Match was published in February 1860. Between 1861 and 1863 he worked for Frederick McCoy, drawing specimens and lithographing natural history subjects for McCoy’s Prodromus of the Palaeontology of Victoria and Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria published in the 1870s. During this period, in October 1862, he again became insolvent. Throughout the 1860s he had periods of temporary work as a draughtsman with the Mining Department and for various publishers, including Charles Troedel , Julius Hamel and Edward Whitehead . He became insolvent for the third time in July 1869.

Following a short period with F.W. Niven in 1869-70 and an unsuccessful application in June 1870 for the position of drawing master at the National Gallery of Victoria, he again set up in business, at 83 Swanston Street, where he survived only from 1871 to 1872. He seems to have been appointed to the Engineer-in-Chief’s Office of the Railway Department as a draughtsman shortly after this, a position he held until his retirement on 31 December 1885.

In addition to his artistic work, Gilks was involved with the editorial and illustrative side of the Melbourne Illustrated News (1854) and Cakes and Ale (1877). Neither of these ventures was successful. Apart from his own sketches he lithographed the work of well-known local artists, including Cuthbert Clarke and Edmund Thomas . Gilks was a foundation member of Cyrus Mason 's Buonarotti Club, attending the first meeting on 19 May 1883 and continuing as an active member until 11 December 1886. Thereafter he returned to London, where he died. The date of his death is not known.

Writers:

Darragh, Thomas A.

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011