The Midmost Waters

1952

Special Collections G477 FH38. Reproduced by permission of the Robert Gibbings Estate and the Heather Chalcroft Literary Agency

London: The Naldrett Press

In 1944 Gibbings had a hankering to visit the South Pacific again. He began planning his trip to depart in 1945. During the Second World War, Gibbings’s wife Elisabeth had debunked to Canada with their two children, Vahine and Tiare, and towards the end of the war she found it difficult to get a passage back to England. A week before Gibbings’s departure for New Zealand, the family returned. Gibbings left in September 1945 and would spend the next two years touring Polynesia with a six month stint in Wellington in 1947. Elisabeth remained in England and gave birth to their third child, Shaun, in 1946. The drawings for The Midmost Waters were made during his trip south. Gibbings was pleased to reuse them as he was very busy at the time with other commissions.