Gibbs, Miss (McKechnie Section 1)

Known from two advertisements in the West Briton (3 and 24 June, 1824). The first of these reads:

Extraordinary Developement [sic] of

NATURAL GENIUS

MISS GIBBS

By mere sight only. without the aid of the Profile Machine, Pen, Pencil, or Crayon but with a pair of COMMON SCISSORS only, gives and Astonishing Delineation of the HUMAN FACE and FIGURE

In Bust, or Full-Length, Standing Sitting or in Groupes [sic]: and engages to produce, in two or three minutes, for a Profile Bust, a most SATISFACTORY LIKENESS, for one Shilling.

Specimens may be seen, and attendance given, from ten o’clock in the Morning, till eight in the evening.

At Mr. HODGSON'S, Hatter, No. 25

Boscawen-Street, Truro

PRICES VARY FROM Is. to £2. 10s.

Frames of all Descriptions. — Profiles accurately copied. — Miss G's stay at TRURO will be short as she intends to make a speedy tour of Cornwall.

Families and Parties attended to, if the order amounts to not

less than One Guinea.

Truro, June 3, 1824.

The second advertisement reads:

A CARD

Mr. Gibbs cannot leave TRURO without some public expression of the pleasure he will ever feel in reflecting upon the marked attention to his Daughter's talent, in CUTTING LIKENESSES, has met with in TRURO, and begs to say that Miss GIBBS heartily concurs in the same sentiments, and that they will leave its hospitable and liberal inhabitants with considerable regret. It is expected Miss G. will be in PENZANCE in the course of a few days.

Truro, June 24, 1824

It seems possible that Miss Gibbs was the daughter of Hinton Gibbs (see Section Three), who appears to have ceased work after the early 1820s. Graves records two artists, one of whom may have been the subject of this entry: a Miss Gibbs, who exhibited a portrait at the Royal Academy in 1845, from London (where Hinton Gibbs was based); and a Miss Mary Gibbs, who sent in from Brentford a total of ten exhibits of ‘figures’ to various institutions, 1860-78.

I have seen no work by this artist. It appears from the advertisements that she was a freehand cutter, working probably only in plain black, who cut bust-length and full-length portraits and family groups.