Evelyn's Diary and Walpole's Catalogue of Painters are almost the only sources of information which we have concerning this famous man, and the scanty witness which they afford does not correspond in every particular; but by combining the two, as Allan Cunningham has done for his sketch of Gibbons in Lives of British Painters, Sculptors, and Archi teets, we may be able to arrive at something like the truth, so far as it can be known Here therefore is the rough outline, such as it really stands.