[From the catalogue-in-progress for “Landscapes & Livestock”, a loan exhibition for Agincourt Homecoming in the Fall of 2015]
GILBERT, George Murray [born 1870]
Basket of Fruit
1938
oil on board / 10.0 inches by 8.0 inches
Who was George Murray Gilbert?
Standard sources are silent on the identity of Gilbert, artist of this still life.* Dated 1938, it is more characteristic of the 19th century, the period of its frame. Neither do we know its source for the collection or the date of acquisition.
*On-line genealogical sources reveal a George Murray Gilbert who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1922. A sixteen-year-old could have painted this still life. However, a nephew of that Gilbert has written to say that it was more likely his great-grandfather, who was born in 1870 in Nebraska and still active about the time this work is dated. The 1940 US Census places Gilbert in Brooklyn, NY, aged seventy, and still an artist. We are grateful for the clarification.
The George Murray Gilbert you referred to (born in Boston in 1922) was my uncle but it is unlikely that he was the artist. However, family lore does indicate that my great grandfather, George Murray Gilbert, was an artist. He was born in 1870 in Nebraska and was still alive in New York in 1925.