Richard Gibson

Richard Gibson (1615 – 23 July 1690), known as "Dwarf Gibson", was an English painter of portrait miniatures and a court dwarf in England during the reigns of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, Charles II, and William III and Mary II.

Both Andrew Marvell and Edmund Waller wrote poems addressed to him.

Life His early life is undocumented, but he is said to have been a page in the service of a lady in Mortlake, who recognised his artistic talent. She supported him to study art under Francis Cleyn, director of design at the Mortlake Tapestry Works. In the 1630s, Gibson was working for Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, who was the Lord Chamberlain. He is referred to as "little Dick, my lord Chamberlain's page" in notebooks recording a number of copies he made of existing paintings in royal and aristocratic collections. At the same time, he was producing original portrait paintings for aristocratic clients. Herbert was his most important early patron, and may have introduced him to Peter Lely, with whom Gibson would enjoy a close and productive relationship. Lely painted several portraits of Gibson. During Cromwell's regime he remained active as a painter at the Protector's court. However, Gibson's patrons in the 1650s are typically Royalists, but generally of the faction that had been supporters of parliament early in the war. All the Gibson children were of typical size.

Style

The Grove Dictionary of Art states that "the miniatures assigned to Gibson are characterized by the thick pigment and parallel striations that give his work an impastoed quality".

DG monogram Engraving by A. Walker after Lely's portrait of Gibson and his wife Anne It has been argued that a number of miniatures signed with the monogram "DG" are the work of Gibson, on the grounds that they are "stylistically inseparable" from his known work of a later period, which is usually signed "RG". The "DG" miniatures appear to date from the artist's early career when no examples of his work with his usual "RG" monogram are known. If this is so, it is possible that the artist proudly adopted the nickname "Dwarf Gibson" as his signature. Alternatively, it may have stood for "Dick Gibson", the version of his name by which he was known in his youth.