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Gibson, Richard [Dick; Dwarf]
(b ?1615; d London, 23 July 1690). English miniature painter. He is said to have received some instruction in painting from Francis Cleyn, director of the Mortlake tapestry works. He entered the service of the Lord Chamberlain, Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, and had attracted the attention of Charles I by 1639, when he was asked to make a miniature copy, after Peter Oliver, of Titian’s Venus and Adonis (Burghley House, Cambs). It seems likely that a group of mid-17th century portrait miniatures signed on the back with the initials DG is by Gibson, signing himself as Dick or Dwarf Gibson; many of these portraits are of descendants of the Earl of Pembroke and the related Capel and Dormer families, for example Charles Dormer, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon (Badminton House, Glos), who were important patrons of his close friend Peter Lely. Gibson copied in miniature a number of Lely’s portraits (for example Anne Hude, Duchess of York; London, Wallace) for Charles II, and Lely painted a double portrait of Gibson and his Wife (Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell A. Mus.). Gibson became drawing-master to Princess Mary and Princess Anne, daughters of James II, and accompanied Mary to the Netherlands on her marriage to William of Orange in 1677. He was frequently in The Hague until 1688 when, on the accession of William III, he returned to England. The miniatures assigned to Gibson are characterized by the thick pigment and parallel striations that give his work an impastoed quality. His daughter, Susan Penelope Gibson (1652/5–1700), became well known as a miniature painter under her married name of Rosse.
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