The New Testament

1934-36

Brasch Collection BS2085 1934 L6

London: J.M. Dent & Sons

Religion and religiousness pervaded the Gill household. George Gill, Eric’s grandfather, was a Congregational minister who had worked with London Missionary Society in the Cook Islands. Gill’s father, the Rev. Arthur Tidman, became a clergyman for a sect called ‘the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connection’. His two brothers became Anglican missionaries in Papua New Guinea, and his sister Madeline was a Church of England nun, working in Poona, India. On meeting Gill for the first time, René Hague wrote: ‘I thought he was a Dutch missionary’. For one who wrote: ‘The thing about Christianity, the thing about the Cross, about Calvary, is that it is true to man’, Gill must have enjoyed illustrating the Aldine Bible (as it was called) and printing the text in Joanna 12 point. Here is his superb illustration to St John’s Gospel.