Gilbert-Lambuth Portrait. 36” x 48” Oil on canvas 1968

Gilbert-Lambuth Portrait

My cousin, *Clayton Calhoun, has admired these two men, Dr. John Wesley Gilbert and Bishop Walter R. Lambuth, since he was a little boy. While Clayton was President of Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, I was asked to do this painting, in a Congo jungle setting, for the Gilbert-Lambuth Memorial Chapel to be hung in the narthex. I considered it an honor, respecting both men as true Christian individuals.

Dr. John Wesley Gilbert was born in Hephzibah, Georgia near Augusta, on January 9, 1865. He was the first black student at Paine and later became a professor on the faculty. Some more of his background, in part, shows that he was a gifted linguist, a Minister, Secretary to the American Minister to Greece, a member of the Philological Association of America and a fellow of the Archeological Institute. One of his quoted views is, “True greatness is humility.”

Bishop Walter R. Lambuth was born in the city of Shanghi, Kiangsu, China in 1854, to missionary parents of Scottish and English lineage continuing a line of missionary pioneers. He was a physician as well as a Minister. Bishop Lambuth founded two famous schools in Japan, Hiroshima Girls School in 1887, Kwansei Gakuin School for boys in 1889, and helped found Soochow Hospital in China the same year. He was also a trustee at Paine.

When these humble individuals met in London to start their missionary journey to the Congo, Gilbert asked, “What shall be our relationship?” Lambuth replied, “We shall be as brothers.”