An Englishman by birth, Gittins graduated from the Kidderminster School of Arts and Crafts before arriving in America to pursue further art studies at Brigham Young University. In 1947, he took a teaching post at the University of Utah. As a full professor, he was chair of the art department from 1956 to 1962, was honored with the University Distinguished Teaching award in 1976. Working in his inimitable realist manner, he was perhaps Utah’s leading portraitist and figure painter, as well as one of the state’s most influential teachers. The late art historian Robert Olpin said of him, “Gittins was able to render truth to his work that is both exciting and incorporates a masterly knowledge of traditional portraiture.”

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