Artist Gilbert Wilson finally gets his due.

Hat & Beard Press, the boutique publisher of books on Ray Bradbury, Lou Reed and David Lynch, is proud to publish an edition of Moby-Dick with illustrations by Gilbert Wilson during author Herman Melville’s 200^th birthday year. Hat & Beard is a small press that specializes in beautiful art books tied to gallery shows, anniversaries and niche interests. The book is out now.

The Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mary Schmich wrote a piece about the project and how Wilson’s legacy was rescued from a Kentucky barn in the 1990s.

Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude, has praised Wilson’s work, calling the forthcoming book: “A superb new-old edition of Moby-Dick – if the imperishable book is like a great throbbing gnomic brain, here’s a set of deliriously psychedelic new cat-scans to entice you back into its mysteries.”

Moby-Dick: Illustrated by Gilbert Wilson has been published in tandem with Edward K. Spann’s biography of Wilson, Unfinished and Unbroken: The Life of Artist Gilbert Wilson.

“This is an amazing project that we’re proud to be publishing,” says J.C. Gabel, publisher of Hat & Beard Press. “Gilbert Wilson’s work needs to be studied and appreciated by a wider audience, and we’re happy to help that happen.”

The books have the full support of both Wilson’s and Spann’s families, who have been great champions of the projects.

“I’m happy,” said Allen Morrison, Wilson’s nephew, just before his death in January 2019. “The purpose of a book is so other that people can see his work, so that it’s just not in a Terre Haute museum.

Morrison continued: “Gil would be flattered, of course. He always said nothing would be published until after his death. Several people have tried to do things about him; we’ve had some defeats before. To see people that weren’t giving up on the story, he’d be pleased, honored and enthusiastic.”

All images courtesy of the Swope Art Museum.