The distinctive alphabet commissioned by the Imperial War Graves Commission for the military headstones of the First World War is etched onto our national conscience, a dignified and uniform response to the chaos and human loss it represents. Yet few today are likely to know anything of the man who designed it, MacDonald ‘Max’ Gill (1884-1947).
This wasn’t the case in the first half of the 20th century when works by the graphic artist, architect and muralist were popular and ubiquitous. His vibrant maps and posters were commissioned regularly by British institutions such as the General Post Office, the Empire Marketing Board and London Underground.
Gill drew the procession map for the official Coronation programme of George VI in 1937 and commemorated the Atlantic Treaty in 1942 with a poster bearing the pasted-in signatures of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The subject matter and apparent optimism of his work at a particular moment in the decline of the British Empire has made his images apt illustration choices for History Today articles over the years.
Gill’s great niece Caroline Walker, who is currently writing his biography, believes Max’s disappearance from the limelight is due to the ephemeral nature of much of his work, created for advertising purposes rather than as artworks. Nevertheless it seems surprising that the younger brother of the well-known sculptor and typographer, Eric Gill, does not yet merit his own entry in the ODNB.
In the 1980s relatives of Max and his second wife Priscilla, inherited the couple’s Sussex cottage and there they discovered stashes of Gill’s original work. The formed the basis of the free exhibition Out of the Shadows, which first appeared at the University of Brighton in 2011. It has now opened at the PM Gallery at Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing where it will be on show until November 2nd.
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