ShortHand: Eric Gill - British Art’s Darkest Secret

Hannah Maguire (0:13)

Picked up a Penguin Classics book recently? Or tuned in to an old rerun on the BBC? Well, without knowing it, you've been consuming the work of an artist who shaped the visual identity of 20th century Britain. Typeface designer and sculptor Eric Gill.

And while you might not have known his name before, you're about to find out way more about the man behind the neat black lettering than you ever bargained for. A devout Catholic convert who preached a philosophy of traditional craftsmanship and spirituality, Eric Gill was known as one of Britain's most celebrated artists. But decades after his death, twisted details from his very own diaries came to light. They painted a less than flattering portrait of the creative genius, exposing him as a sex-mad pervert who dabbled in incest with his own sisters, sexually abused his own daughters, and even indulged in sinister experiments with his pet dog.

Luckily for Eric Gill, people weren't quite so hot on cancelling everyone back then. It wasn't really a thing. But today, his crimes have a lot of people asking, how far can we really separate art from the artist? This is the shorthand.

Suruthi Bala (1:30)

To start, we are taking you back to January 2022, when crowds gathered outside the BBC's broadcasting house in London, watching in shock as a beanie-clad man scaled the building with a hammer. The man hacked at the iconic 10-foot wall sculpture of Shakespearean characters Prospero and Ariel above the building's main entrance, drawing gasps with every chunk of stone that tumbled to the pavement below.

As for what has triggered this frenzied assault on the Beebs' stony guardians, well, according to Beanie Guy, the artist behind the sculpture was a paedophile. Police eventually got him down, and the beanie man was arrested for causing criminal damage. But not before he managed to gouge a good few holes out of artwork that had proudly welcomed the BBC's work force since 1933, leaving young Ariel conspicuously lacking his delicately carved nether regions. As BBC bigwigs dithered over loudening cries for the sculpture's removal, the story blew the lid off an open secret that had been festering in artistic circles for decades. One that exposed an unsavoury truth, that the BBC would rather have kept under wraps. They've got quite a few of those.

So, let's go back.

Hannah Maguire (2:49)

Maybe we should just arrest everyone who applies for a job at the BBC.

Suruthi Bala (2:53)

Why not, man? It's something to do, isn't it? Like, it's just, they are, everyone, every single person who's ever walked the earth as a paedophile is how it's starting to feel to me. So let's go back and tell that horrible story once again, all the way from the beginning.

Hannah Maguire (3:10)

The man at the center of this shitstorm entered the world almost exactly 140 years earlier in 1882 in the seaside town of Brighton.

Arthur Eric Routon Gill was one of a whopping 13 children born to the Reverend Arthur Tideman Gill and his wife, Cicely Rose King, a former opera singer who went by the stage name Rose Leroux before going on to have a gaggle of children. That is fucking...

Suruthi Bala (3:42)

It's like 11 too many. pathetic. How is that possible?

Hannah Maguire (3:47)

I mean... There needs to be like four twins in there. I just cannot imagine how this is possible.

And the young Eric's artistic ambitions were clear from an early age. Inspired by the ornate lettering at Chichester Cathedral, Gill studied at a local college before moving to London in the early 1900s to pursue a career in design. He became an apprentice for an ecclesiastical architecture firm, the guys who built the churches, and he also took evening classes in stone masonry and calligraphy. One of his teachers was Edward Johnston, the man most famous for designing the iconic London Underground font that's still used today.

Gill became a disciple of Johnston, sparking a creative partnership that lasted years. After abandoning his architectural training, Gill set up a business cutting headstone inscriptions and designing fancy chapter headings for books.

Suruthi Bala (4:41)

But art wasn't just a way for Gill to pay the bills. It had a deeper philosophical meaning. As a young man, Gill initially aligned himself with the arts and crafts movement, popularized by his predecessors like William Morris, rejecting modern mass production techniques and pushing for a return to old-timey craftsmanship methods. But by 1907, he'd outgrown the movement and was publicly criticizing its failings.

Eric Gill was searching for more, and he'd found it in the oh-so-tight embrace of the Roman Catholic Church.

Gill and his wife became Catholics in 1913, with Ethel even changing her name to Mary. This spiritual awakening triggered Gill to move Mary and his young daughters, Elizabeth Petra and Joanna, to a plot of land on Ditchling Common in Sussex. Here, he built a community of artisans called Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, made up of fellow Catholic craftsmen who strictly followed traditional methods. Most of the Guild's members, including Gill, were also members of the Third Order of St. Dominic, a lay division of the Dominican Order, with a focus on preaching.