Born in Alnwick, Northumberland, Phelan Gibb was the first British artist of his kind and a little ahead of his time.Having studied in Edinbugh, Paris, Antwerp and Munich he exhibited in group exhibitions at Salon d'Automme, the Allied Artists' Association as well as the Wertheim, Alpine and Redfern Galleries and also in New York.

Sir William Van Horne, quoted in Lucy Wertheim, Adventures in Art, 1947