He is famous for his statues of Sir Robert Peel (Westminster Abbey), William Huskisson (St George's Square) and Queen Victoria (Houses of Parliament).

When he was nine years old the family were on the point of emigrating to America, but his mother put a stop to this plan on their arrival at Liverpool, where they settled, and where Gibson was sent to school.

[4] It was while apprenticed to the Franceys brothers that Gibson came to the attention of the historian William Roscoe, for whom he executed a terracotta bas-relief now in the Liverpool museum.

He studied anatomy, his lessons provided gratuitously by a medical man, and gained introductions to families of refinement and culture in Liverpool.

There he was generously received by Antonio Canova, to whom he had introductions, the Venetian sculptor putting not only his experience in art but his purse at the English student's service.

[7] Gibson was elected R.A. in 1836, and bequeathed all his property and the contents of his studio to the Royal Academy, where his marbles and casts are open to the public as of 2005[update].

His largest effort of this class was the group showing Queen Victoria Supported by Justice and Clemency, in the Houses of Parliament, his finest work in the round.

Of noble character also in execution and expression of thought is the statue of William Huskisson with the bared arm; and no less, in effect of aristocratic ease and refinement, the seated figure of Dudley North.

Some of these are of a truly refined and pathetic character, such as the monument to the Countess of Leicester, wife of Thomas Coke, the 1st Earl, or that to his friend Mrs Huskisson in Chichester Cathedral, and that of the Bonomi children.

"[4] The letters between Gibson and Margaret Sandbach, granddaughter of William Roscoe, and a sketch of his life that lady induced him to write, furnish the chief materials for his biography.