Raising a glass to art that’s still plain brilliant
My goodness, Guinness is grateful to John Gilroy
THE name John Gilroy may not mean anything to the wider public, but there’s a very good chance most people will fondly recall his work.
Born 120 years ago, Gilroy’s place in history has been assured thanks to a menagerie of muchloved animations: among them Guinness’s toucan, its smiling pint and its red lobster.
Credited with turning Guinness into the global superbrand it is today, Gilroy was behind the ‘My Goodness, My Guinness’ and ‘Guinness For Strength’ campaigns in the 1930s. The first of these sketches famously featured a sea lion balancing a glass of Guinness on its nose. Gilroy inserted a caricature of himself into the image, as a hapless zookeeper, and an iconic image was duly born. Working with copywriters like Ronald Barton and Robert Bevan, Gilroy produced more than 100 press advertisements and nearly 50 poster designs for Guinness over 35 years.
Gilroy’s works were created well into the 1960s, and have enjoyed something of a hipster revival of late as demand for the images has surged.
His stout-supping creations are instantly recognisable but who was the artist whose work lives on to this day?
AS it happens, Gilroy’s life is every bit as colourful as his work. Born in Northumberland in England, Gilroy took a somewhat circuitous route into the art world. He was one of eight children of John William Gilroy, a marine landscape painter, and his wife Elizabeth.
It appears that the child significantly explains the man: the youngster loved to copy cartoons out of issues of Punch magazine. By the age of 15, and taking small jobs to pay for his meagre art materials, he became a cartoonist at the Evening Chronicle. There, his stock and trade was to draw caricatures of famous entertainers on the Newcastle theatre circuit.
As a promising student, Gilroy gained an art scholarship to Durham University, but then decided to serve in the First World War with the Royal Field Artillery in Palestine, France and Italy. When the war ended, he went to the esteemed Royal College of Art. He won prizes and scholarships, and excelled so much in decorative painting that he became a teacher there. And the first tentative buds of his wildly successful commercial career started to show: in 1920, he got his first commission from the Hydraulic Engineering company.
He threw himself into the college’s social life, contributing to the college magazine and playing on their football team. It was here that he met Gwendoline Short, another promising artist. They married in 1924 and had a son, John, three years later.
After his stint teaching at the RCA and the similarly prestigious Camberwell College of Arts, Gilroy found himself applying for a job at SH Benson’s advertising agency as an in-house artist in 1925. Among his first clients were Bovril, Macleans and Coleman’s of Norwich.
By the time Benson’s had won the Guinness contract, they were already facing an uphill battle. The Guinness family had eschewed any kind of promotion for more than 170 years, and when they finally agreed to run a campaign, they insisted the quality of the advertising equal their brewing.
In addition to his job at the ad agency, Gilroy invited subjects over to sit for portraits at his airy, light-filled studio over on Holland Park. Among them were actors, royals, politicians and celebrities, including Edward VIII (who abdicated from the British throne to marry Wallis Simpson).
By 1945, Gilroy was living as a celebrated artist in Chelsea and in 1950 he married for the second time. In a neat twist of fate, Gilroy and his new wife, Elizabeth Margaret Bramley, and her children Jenefer and Robin moved into the former studio of Sir Bernard Partridge, whose cartoons Gilroy had slavishly copied from Punch in his youth.
His was a distinguished life by anyone’s standard, yet it’s his work with Guinness that is largely credited with turning the advertising world on its head.
‘His philosophy was that somebody sitting on the top deck of a bus going past a hoarding should be able to quickly recognise the poster. You had to keep it simple, high-impact, colourful, amusing. It had to be memorable,’ David Hughes, a former Guinness employee who has written several books about Gilroy and the brand, told the BBC. ‘The white background was important to him because he didn’t want the eye to be distracted.’
Guinness archivist Eibhlin Colgan credits Gilroy with not only creating timeless art but with also lending the brewing giant an everlasting sense of playfulness and humour.
‘The little twinkle in the eye that Gilroy brought to Guinness really set up the brand for all the amazing advertising that followed,’ she said. In 1975 Gilroy was awarded an honorary MA by Newcastle University and in 1981, now living at 6 Ryecroft Street, Fulham, he was appointed a Freeman of the City of London.
In 1971, around 800 pieces of Gilroy advertising artwork disappeared from SH Benson. The missing items – oil paintings, to be shown to Guinness for approval, mainly – started to sporadically turn up in 2008. Now they are being sold by a couple of art dealers in the US on behalf of their anonymous client for tens of thousands of dollars each. It has been estimated that the 350 or so paintings sold so far have made a total of between $1million and $2million.
John Gilroy died at Guildford on the April 11, 1985, aged 86, and is buried at Ampney St Peter in Gloucestershire, near the home of his son and three grandchildren.
To commemorate the 120th anniversary of Gilroy’s birth, Guinness launched a series of collectible cans this month, illustrated with two of Gilroy’s most enduring designs – the lobster and the smiling pint.
His grandson Jim now looks after Gilroy’s illustrious estate. ‘Not only was John Gilroy a gifted artist, he was an advertising revolutionary and ahead of his time. We are very proud that his work is being commemorated in this way,’ he said recently.
And, when asked in a BBC interview a few years before his death if people would remember whether ‘Gilroy was here’, the man himself said: ‘Ah, yes they will. If they follow some of my humour they’ll say he certainly was here.’
Guinness’s John Gilroy collectible cans are now available in major retailers. For further information visit guinness.com.