North Wales, there lived at the end of the last century a petty
labouring market gardener of the name of Gibson, who knew and spoke no
other tongue than his native Welsh. In 1790, his wife gave birth to a
son whom they christened John, and who grew up, a workman's child,
under the shadow of the great castle, and among the exquisite scenery
of the placid land-locked Conway river. John Gibson's parents, like
the mass of labouring Welsh people, were honest, God-fearing folk, with
a great earnestness of principle, a profound love of truth, and a
hatred of all mean or dirty actions. They brought up the boy in these
respects in the way he should go; and when he was old he indeed did not
depart from them. Throughout his life, John Gibson was remarkable for
his calm, earnest, straightforward simplicity, a simplicity which
seemed almost childish to those who could not understand so grand and
uncommon and noble a nature as his.

From his babyhood, almost, the love of art was innate in the boy; and
when he was only seven years old, he began to draw upon a slate a scene
that particularly pleased him--a line of geese sailing upon the smooth
glassy surface of a neighbouring pond. He drew them as an ordinary
child almost always does draw--one goose after another, in profile, as
though they were in procession, without any attempt at grouping or
perspective in any way. His mother praised the first attempt, saying
to him in Welsh, "Indeed, Jack, this is very like the geese;" and Jack,
encouraged by her praise, decided immediately to try again. But not
being an ordinary child, he determined this time to do better; he drew
the geese one behind the other as one generally sees them in actual
nature. His mother then asked him to draw a horse; and "after gazing
long and often upon one," he says, "I at last ventured to commit him to
the slate." When he had done so, the good mother was even more
delighted. So, to try his childish art, she asked him to put a rider
on the horse's back. Jack went out once more, "carefully watched men
on horseback," and then returning, made his sketch accordingly. In
this childish reminiscence one can see already the first workings of
that spirit which made Gibson afterwards into the greatest sculptor of
all Europe. He didn't try even then to draw horse or man by mere
guesswork; he went out and studied the subject at first hand. There
are in that single trait two great elements of success in no matter