• Was an English animal painter, illustrator, and etcher.
• Gilpin was born in Carlisle in Cumbria, Kingdom of Great Britain.
• He was the seventh child of Captain John Bernard Gilpin, a soldier and amateur artist, and Matilda Langstaffe.
• As a child Gilpin learnt to draw from his father, who ran a drawing school in Carlisle.
• He was sent to London at the age of fourteen to study under the marine painter
Samuel Scott in Covent Garden.
• Gilpin left Scott in 1758, and devoted himself to animal painting from then on.
• Gilpin lived at Knightsbridge in London for some years.
• Gilpin first exhibited with the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1762, and continued to show pictures there, mostly of horses, up to 1783.
• He exhibited at the Royal Academy, London from 1786 until his death.
• He was elected an associate of the academy (ARA) in 1795, and Royal Academician (RA) in 1797.
• Gilpin married Elizabeth Broom; their son William Sawrey Gilpin also became an artist.
• His pupils included John Warwick Smith and George Garrard.