painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney on 25 December 1903, daughter of William Walker, a restauranteur, and Myra, née Tindall. She studied at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School in the early 1920s, where she contributed to the student magazine, Undergrowth , e.g. design of 1927 showing two women reading (ill. Butler, Sydney By Design [ SBD ], 10). Her teachers included Henry Gibbons, Ashton’s associate and successor as principal of the school, whom she married in 1922. They had 2 children and separated in 1937. In the late 1920s Gladys attended art classes given by Thea Proctor, who became a lifelong friend.
Gladys exhibited with the Society of Artists in the late 1920s and 1930s, and regularly with the Contemporary Group throughout the 1930s. She produced woodcut and linocut prints and watercolour paintings, e.g. In The Garden (a loving couple) 1928, linocut, National Gallery of Australia (ill. SBD , 30). In 1938 Proctor commented:
The watercolours of Gladys Gibbons are in the tradition of English watercolour painting, or it would be more correct to call it watercolour drawing, as they are light washes of colour over pencil drawing.
From the late 1930s Gibbons taught art, first at St Gabriel’s School for Girls, and later at Roseville (Sydney), Brighton (Melbourne), and at Ravenswood Girls’ School, Sydney. She died at Sydney in 1977 [1969 according to Roger Butler].
- Writers:
- Johnson, Heather
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
