Eric Gill was one of the most celebrated British artists of the 20th century – and for decades his work held pride of place in the small museum based in the village where he once lived.
But after his death, details emerged of his grotesque sexual conduct – including sustained abuse of two of his daughters and his younger sister – and there has been increasing clamour since for his work not to be shown.
The growing controversy around Gill came to national attention in January when a protester used a chisel to deface one of his most famous pieces, the statue Prospero and Ariel outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House,.
Now the Observer can reveal that Gill’s home-town gallery has apparently begun a campaign to distance itself from the artist. Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft in East Sussex has been more closely associated with Gill than any other artist since it was founded in 1985, later receiving £2.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. So close was its connection that for years it was widely known as “the Eric Gill museum”.
But none of his substantial body of work in its collection has been on display for most of 2022, and he is now described as one artist “among many others” the museum features when previously he was “central”.
Until 2017, work by Gill, who lived and worked in Ditchling for 15 years, was exhibited at the museum without any commentary on his personal conduct. But then, following a lengthy review involving a panel of artists and critics, the museum decided to make reference to it next to his work – while continuing to show it.
As recently as February last year, the museum was still asserting its intention to continue to be associated with Gill – describing him in a statement as “an artist central to our narrative and whose importance to art and design history in the UK and around the world is impossible to ignore … we absolutely condemn Gill’s abuse of his daughters with no attempt to hide, excuse, normalise or minimise, yet we also have a duty to protect, display and interpret the artwork we hold in our collections”.
However, since then it appears to have quietly reconsidered: without making any public announcement, it has for most of 2022 removed all trace of Gill, his work remaining in storage. From January to May, the museum was given over wholly to a show featuring the more wholesome local figure of Dame Vera Lynn.
And it has only been in recent weeks that four smaller pieces have been put back on display for context in an exhibition dedicated to another artist, Japanese potter Shoji Hamada, who also worked in Ditchling.
This year is thought to be the first time in the museum’s history that no work by Gill had been on display – and that period lasted 10 months.
The museum told The Observer that it is trying to find new ways to “give visitors a clearer picture of the core Ditching narrative about the artists and craftspeople who lived here from the beginning of the 20th century until the present day, including Gill among many others”.
This “among many others” tone is in stark contrast to his previous “central” position. Observer journalist Rachel Cooke, who took part in that 2017 review, described the museum then as “a small but beautiful gallery dedicated mostly to displays of work by Eric Gill”.
Journalist and author Alex Larman said: “The news that the Ditchling museum is removing Gill is both depressing and predictable. Gill and Ditchling are inextricably interlinked, and it would be a shortsighted act of folly for the museum to attempt to airbrush the village’s most famous inhabitant from its cultural history.
“Nobody should defend Gill’s personal actions, which were appalling and depraved and have rightly now been recognised as the abusive and coercive behaviour that they were. But many great artists throughout history – from Caravaggio to Gauguin – behaved despicably, and it seems to me to be barking up the wrong tree to attempt to make an example of Gill, especially as there has been no attempt to have a public debate or consultation about this.”
But Margaret Kennedy, who founded the Minister and Clergy Sexual Assault Survivors (Macsas), and has campaigned to have Gill sculptures removed from Westminster Cathedral since 1998, approved of the move in Ditchling.
She said: “Once you know a work is by Gill, you automatically ask yourself ‘Why is this institution honouring a sex offender?’ And you wonder if they care enough to understand that seeing it honoured means my pain being triggered is of no consequence. It’s a bit like saying: ‘We know this might trigger for survivors but actually Gill’s brilliant art trumps that’.”
Gill was a prolific artist, sculptor, printer, designer and writer, described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as “the greatest artist-craftsman of the 20th century”.
His sculptures appeared on numerous religious buildings including Westminster Cathedral and he was commissioned by the likes of the League of Nations (precursor to the UN). His typefaces were used widely by, for example, Penguin Books, the BBC and British Rail.
He died aged 58 in 1940. But it was another 49 years before details of his astonishingly dark and abusive sexual appetites – he even abused the family dog – were uncovered in diaries by the journalist Fiona MacCarthy while researching a biography.
