Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/375

 twenty she determined to earn for herself an honourable livelihood, and returned with her sister to her father's home in London. Mary Gillies became an authoress, and died in 1870, while Margaret took the somewhat bold step of becoming a professional artist. She received some lessons in miniature-painting from Frederick Cruickshank, and quickly gained a reputation in that branch of art, although she had had no regular artistic training. Before she was twenty-four she was commissioned to paint a miniature of the poet Wordsworth, at whose residence, Rydal Mount, she spent several weeks. She painted also a portrait of Charles Dickens, and one of Mrs. Marsh, the novelist, and for many successive years contributed portraits to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. She then went for a while to Paris, where she worked in the studios of Hendrik and Ary Scheffer, and on her return to England she exhibited from time to time portraits in oil. It was, however, not long before she devoted herself to water-colour-painting, usually choosing domestic, romantic, or sentimental subjects, and it is on these that her chief distinction rests. In 1852 she was elected an associate of the Old (now the Royal) Society of Painters in Water-colours, and was a constant contributor to its exhibitions down to the year of her death. Some of the best of her exhibited works were ‘Past and Future,’ 1855, and ‘The Heavens are telling,’ 1856, both of which have been engraved; ‘Rosalind and Celia,’ 1857; ‘Una and the Red Cross Knight in the Cavern of Despair,’ ‘An Eastern Mother,’ and ‘Vivia Perpetua in Prison,’ 1858; ‘A Father and Daughter,’ 1859; ‘Imogen after the Departure of Posthumus,’ 1860; ‘Beyond,’ 1861; ‘The Wanderer,’ 1868; ‘Prospero and Miranda,’ 1874; ‘Cercando Pace,’ a beautiful drawing in three compartments, 1875; and ‘The Pilgrimage,’ which was exhibited at the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Manchester in 1887. Her last work was ‘Christiana by the River of Life,’ exhibited in 1887. She lived for many years in Church Row, Hampstead, but died at The Warren, Crockham Hill, Kent, on 20 July 1887, of pleurisy, after a few days' illness.

[Times, 26 July 1887; Academy 30 July 1887; Miss Clayton's English Female Artists, 1876, ii. 87–94; Exhibition Catalogues of the Royal Academy, 1832–61; Exhibition Catalogues of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-colours, 1852–87; Mary Howitt: An Autobiography, 1889, ii.]  GILLIES, ROBERT PEARSE (1788–1858), autobiographer, a member of the Forfarshire family of Gillies, was born at or near Arbroath in 1788. His father, Dr. Thomas Gillies, was possessed of a landed estate, which on his death in 1808 his son inherited. Gillies had already collected a library of books, written poetry, and studied under Dugald Stewart and Playfair at the university of Edinburgh. He was admitted advocate in 1813, and, losing most of his fortune in consequence of a rash speculation, settled in Edinburgh in 1815, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. He was one of the early contributors to ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ and figures as ‘Kemperhausen’ in Christopher North's ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ.’ He was a well-known figure among the literary men who frequented the Ballantynes, and was a special friend of Scott. Reminiscences of his intercourse with Scott were published by Gillies in 1837. Like Scott, Gillies was attracted for some time by the literature of Germany, from which he made many translations, published for the most part in ‘Blackwood's Magazine.’ He resided in Germany for a year, and met Goethe and Tieck. Gillies also corresponded with Wordsworth, who encouraged him in his early pecuniary difficulties in a sonnet (Miscellaneous Sonnets, pt. ii. no. 4), commencing— From the dark chambers of dejection freed, Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care, Rise, Gillies, rise: the gates of youth shall bear Thy genius forward like a wingèd steed. Gillies likewise attracted the attention of Byron, who in his ‘Diary’ (23 Nov. 1813) remarks on his work: ‘The young man can know nothing of life; and if he cherishes the disposition which runs through his papers will become useless and perhaps not even a poet, which he seems determined to be. God help him! No one should be a rhymer who could be anything else.’

Most of Gillies's remaining means disappeared in the commercial panic of 1825, and he became involved in a series of lawsuits. Scott assisted him in various ways, and finally suggested to him the idea of a journal of foreign literature. Gillies succeeded in inducing the London firm of Treuttel & Würtz, Treuttel, junr., & Richter to take up the project, and the result was the foundation of the ‘Foreign Quarterly Review’ in July 1827. Gillies as editor was to receive 600l. per annum, but he was to pay the contributors out of this. To the first number articles were contributed by Sir W. Scott (who declined to receive remuneration for his work), Robert Southey, the Rev. G. R. Gleig, W. Maginn, and others.

Gillies now removed to London, where he led a somewhat chequered life. His affairs