Eric Gill

Eric Gill, 1927

Eric Gill, in full Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (born February 22, 1882, Brighton, Sussex, England — died November 17, 1940, Uxbridge, Middlesex), was a British sculptor, engraver, typographic designer, writer, and non-exclusive MAP who experimented sexually across the parameters of sex (i.e. hetero and homosexual), age (intergenerational), and species (bestial). The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a letter-cutter and type designer of genius″. However, Gill has subsequently become a controversial figure after a biography by Fiona McCarthy (2011) revealed and drew attention to the mutually willing (consensual) incestuous sexual relationships between Gill, his daughters and sister.

The 2022 Eric Gill Controversy: Attacks on "the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century"?

Gill had a considerable influence upon public architecture in Britain, with his statues being carved into important sites. One of his most famous statues depicts the characters Prospero and Ariel from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. In the play, the sorceror Prospero reigns over a magical island and is served by "an airy spirit" named Ariel, who is imprisoned in a cloven pine tree and freed by Prospero, to whom offers a year of devoted service in exchange. Gill was commissioned to produce the statue by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC’s) Broadcasting House news organization director-general, Sir John Reith, and was completed in London in 1932. Gill interpreted the statue in reliogious terms, with Philip Hagreen (letter of 21 September 1951) writing that Gill "told me that though he was commissioned to represent Prospero & Ariel as a symbol of the B.B.C.'s activity, he was thinking of the subject as God the Father sending forth the Word". The childlike figure of Ariel was officially modelled by an actor playing the role in London. However, the true model, according to Gill's most recently influential biographer Fiona MacCarthy, “the model in Gill’s mind”, was the artist’s adopted son, Gordian, then in his mid-teens.

Gill created the "Gill Sans" typeface in 1928 which was used by signage for British Railways, and in the classic design system of Penguin Books. The typeface was also featured in the logo for the organization "Save the Children", until controversy around Gill's personal life saw the logo be changed in 2022.

The Uranians and Eric Gill's "queer Catholicism"

Similar to other historians who have argued for, as one recent journal issue was entitled "Restoring Intergenerational Dynamics to Queer History" (2021), the scholar Kristin Mahoney in her book Queer Kinship after Wilde (2022) situates Gill's (in his time) non-normative sexual practice within a "queer strain of Catholicism". Kristin argues that "Gill's sexual practices need

Additionally, Kristin reveals that Gill was friends with the Uranian poet Marc-André Raffalovich (11 September 1864 – 14 February 1934) and his partner John Gray ( ), who is often thought to be the inspiration for Oscar Wilde's character Dorian Gray, in his famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Both men composed Decadent poetry [TBC - Prue]

Eric Gill and Family's Incestuous Relationships

Influential 1st-wave MAP movement pioneer Tom O'Carroll, former chairman of PIE, wrote about the 2022 attacks on Gill's artwork, and claimed he had attempted to meet one of Gill's daughters to discuss her father. O'Carroll wrote:

"By his own account, in his diaries, Gill was indeed a MAP who had sexual relations with his own daughters – one of whom your blog host attempted to meet after a chance encounter in the early 1990s brought me into contact with a relative of Gill’s who told me this daughter, by this time an old lady, still had fond memories of her distinguished father. As you may imagine, I was keen to find out more, directly from her. But the move was blocked. She might be upset, I was told, to have the past raked over after all these years. So she had to be “protected” from me. Hence silenced. And censored."