H.P. Gill, assisted by George Reynolds, lifts art education beyond School of Design in Adelaide from 1882

H. P. Gill in the lecture room of the school of design on North Terrace, Adelaide, in 1905 during a technical art class for student teachers.
Image courtesy Sttae Library of South Australia

H.P. (Henry Pelling) Gill became head of the reunited South Australian School of Design and Painting in Adelaide in 1892.

The board of governors had decided to form a separate School of Painting after the School of Design’s first master Charles Hill retired in 1881. This eventually saw Louis August Ludwig Tannert, a Düsseldorf school and Royal Academy of Dresden graduate, take over the School of Painting in 1882, while Gill in London was appointed as head of the school of design.

Gill had studied at the Brighton School of Art, Hove and Sussex grammar schools and won a scholarship to South Kensington.

In Adelaide, as head of the South Australian School of Design, Gill was assisted from 1887 by George Reynolds, a graduate of Birmingham school of art with an art master’s certificate in London. Reynolds was frequently employed by the school inspector general of schools to illustrate reading books for state schools. He became the education department’s art master, supervising exams in city and suburban schools, and art instruction at the teachers’ training college in Grote Street, Adelaide. He devised the art curriculum, and designed 11 drawing books, for South Australian public schools. After transferring to the Victorian education system, Reynolds in 1906 founded an art school in Mount Gambier.

The reunited School of Design and Painting under Gill in 1892 had a broader syllabus with subjects including china painting under Rosa C. Fiveash. Work from students was sent to the department of science and art in South Kensington, London, for assessment, with an art class teacher's or art class master's certificates awarded.

The school, with a Port Adelaide branch formed around 1893, was renamed the school of design, painting and technical art in 1894 when its ceramic kiln started operating. The school occupied two floors with four large classrooms.

Another name change – to the Adelaide School of Art – came in 1909 with the education department’s takeover, with Gill as principal and examiner. Gill resigned from the school in 1915 due to ill health and died next year during a voyage to England.

Besides his work as a teacher and lecturer, Gill, who became an associate of the Royal College of Art, London, added to Adelaide art scene. In 1890, he founded the Adelaide Art Circle limited to 12 professional artists. Its exhibitions were dominated by Gill's work and it was dissolved in 1892 when Gill was elected president of the moribund South Australian Society of Arts and most committee positions were taken by circle members. A later split created the Adelaide Easel Club.

Gill published The Straight and Crooked Paths of Studentship in 1894. He was honorary curator of the Art Gallery of South Australia and in 1899 visited Europe where, for a committee, he spent £10,000 on art works. He also bought the works of young Australians such as Tom Roberts, Hans Heysen and Frederick McCubbin. Gill contributed one oil and three watercolour of his own paintings to the gallery.