Charlie Gibbons was born in Palau in 1895. He was a ranking chief of Koror, holding the title Rechucher (sometimes simply spelled Reuer) which in days gone by meant that he was in charge of warfaring operations.
Charlie Gibbonsâ father, William, was an enterprising, industrious and capable man. In the late 1800âs his Palauan home was the first to have such furnishings as tables and chairs, the introduction of a new idea to island living. As Gibbonsâ name indicates, there is English in Charliesâs ancestry. The first Gibbons in Palau was James, a West Indian sailor who left his stewardship on a trading schooner to make his home in Palau about 1850.
His father was self-educated; his creative mind expressed itself in many ways. He invented a "machine" with a wooden propeller and wheel to sail his boat, the first wooden boat of western design constructed in Palau. William Gibbonsâ services were much in demand. Because of his facility with the English language, he became an agent for the numerous trading ships stopping in Palau to pick up copra, tortoise shell and trepang. He was an able informant to Dr. and Mrs. Augustin Kramer, the German ethnographers who made an extensive study of Palauan culture. A very religious man, he became the founder of the Seventh Day Adventist mission in Palau. When the German government expanded its administration, adding a governor in Palau to their staff, Willliam Gibbons was chosen for the post.
This family background made it easier for Charlie to accept the discipline of the German mission schools which he attended for five years. In Saipan, he also attended the only public school of those times, where, curiously enough, he learned practical nursing and typing. When he was seventeen, he worked with his Uncle Walter, a blacksmith in Yap. In Yap, he was also employed in setting up the cable system extending to Guam, Manado (Celebes) and Shanghai. Young Charlie became an assistant to the German governor, accompanying him to Ponape when word came of the serious dissension there which ended in an upraising. He remained in Ponape for seven years and then returned to Palau, where he served in the Japanese constabulary and worked in several government agriculture stations. During World War II Palauans were evacuated to Babelthuap, so he settled in his motherâs village in Ngarad municipality and was chief of the hamlet of Ulimang. At the close of the war the United States military government employed him as an interpreter, and when the Navy civil administration was established, he worked in the island affairs department until he left to become Judge of the Palau district court for eleven years. After this he joined the staff of the Palau Museum, where he worked until his death.
Gibbons provided professional assistance to visiting scientists at various times. When living in Ponape he made botanical collections for the German naturalist Dr. Kersting. He served as an informant to Dr. Homer Barnett, the anthropologist, and to Dr. Roland Force, director of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. As a nine year old boy he accompanied his father when he worked with Dr. and Mrs. Kramer, the ethnographers.
No training in art appears in this varied background, not even in carving, which is a common craft in Palau. Yet, after World War II he carved storyboards, a popular craft item. Wielding the adze for carving takes more strength then he had in his late years therefore he turned to watercolor. The images and stories that he created in watercolor are personal documentations of life in Palau in those late years and the not so recent past. Based on personal experience or first hand information, these images reveal a way of life that has disappeared or has become modified in a rapidly changing society. Charlie Gibbons devised his own techniques of presentation, at times reminiscent of drawings on the bai, the menâs meeting house, and its gables and beams. His attention to detail is remarkable. Charlie Gibbonsâ work can be likened to other artists classified as untutored, self-taught, naive or primitive.
Images of Palau are a group of six watercolors, 16" x 14", 14" x 10", 20" x 15", 16" x 11", 20" x 11" and 17 1/2" x 12". $7,500 as a lot or $1,500 each.