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Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois and the Dulwich Picture Gallery

April 27th, 2018

Noel Desenfans and Sir Francis Bourgeois, circa 1805 by Paul Sandby, watercolour on paper

The Dulwich Picture Gallery was England’s first purpose-built art gallery and considered by some to be England’s first national gallery.  Founded by the bequest of Sir Peter Francis Bourgois, dandy, the gallery was built to display his vast picture collection and dedicated to public viewing, something that had not been done before in Great Britain as art collecting was considered a folly of toffs.

Sir Peter Francis was born in London and lived from 1753 to 1811, thus a known figure during the period known as The Regency.  He was not only a collector of art, but a painter, albeit not a highly collected one.  Paintings by Bourgeois today sell in the $800 – $3000 range at British auction houses. In contrast, Bourgeois’s collection, which sits among the 600 plus paintings located in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, is quite fabulous and today has an estimated value of ????(we’ll let you know when we discover an estimate).  The Dulwich Picture Gallery includes Baroque European paintings bequeathed by Bourgois from his “Royal Collection” along with British paintings, notably, the Linley family portraits donated in 1835 and the Fairfax Murray Gift  in 1911 which also included English portraiture.

Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois became an art dealer with a Frenchman by the name of Noël Desenfans who had moved to Paris in 1769 as a writer.  Desenfans became a father figure to Bourgeois after Bourgeois’ own father abandoned him and his sister after the death of their mother in 1768.  Bourgeois was 15 years old at the time.

Together, Desenfans and Borgeois set up and ran the most successful art dealership in London during The Regency era.  The startup capital for the enterprise came from the dowry of Desenfans’ wife, Margeret Morris.

Stanislaus Augustus, King of Poland, commissioned the dealers to establish a Royal Collection for Poland in the year 1790.  Political turmoil however saw the partition of Poland and it’s eventual disappearance from the map as a state in 1795.  With the abdication of Stanislaus Augustus, Buorgeois and Desenfans ended up as the owners of the “Polish” Royal Collection and attempted to sell it on. They approached both the Tsar of Russia and the British crown but were unsuccessful in selling the collection in its entirety.  Desefens died in 1807 which left the collection in the hands of Buorgeois.  After considering bequeathing the collection to the British Museum whom Buorgeois found to be aristocratic and stuffy, he settled upon Dulwich College, with the stipulation that the paintings be made available for the ‘inspection of the public’.

What follows is a description of the founding of the Dulwich Gallery—that appeared in The Art Journal – New Series,  published by  J.S. Virtue and Co. Ltd., London in 1891—along with a not so flattering description of Buorgeois as painter:

SIR FRANCIS BOURGEOIS, R.A.

Sir Francis Bourgeois, who was born in 1756, elected an Associate in 1787, and a Royal Academician in 1793, was not remarkable as a painter, and is chiefly noteworthy to us as the donor of the Dulwich collection. The visitors who frequent that gallery are probably little mindful of the storms which drifted those Art treasures into their present haven. To account for their presence there, they would have to search backwards into troublous times, to the days of the Great Frederick of Prussia and the partition of Poland. Their history is curious and mysterious. They were purchased for Stanislas Poniatowsky, the last King of Poland, by a certain picture-dealer, Noel Desenfans, with money supplied to him by the king. Stanislas abdicated after the partition of his kingdom, but why his property was not sent to him, king or no king, and whether he claimed it or not, are unknown to us ; the pictures remained with Desenfans, were bequeathed by him to his friend Bour geois, and he bequeathed them to Dulwich College.

In 1776 Bourgeois travelled on the Continent, and went to Poland, carrying letters of introduction from Desenfans to King Stanislas, who conferred on him the knighthood of the Order of Merit, and this honour was subsequently confirmed to him by King George III. He painted landscapes in the style of De Loutherbourg, whose pupil he had been, and we think our readers will ask no more of us, and be prepared to admit that when we have subtracted from the art of De Loutherbourg what invention and imagination he possessed, and all his technical dexterity, it leaves us but a poor residuum where withal to furbish forth an eulogium of that of Bourgeois. He died in 1811 of a fall from his horse.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery is located at:

Gallery Road
London
SE21 7AD

Helen Hillyard, Assistant Curator, to arrange an appointment: h.hillyard@dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

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Category: Art & Restoration

Highlander Bible

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IV.—Musquash.

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The Basics of Painting in the Building Trade

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Of Decorated Furniture

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Dec. 24, 1898 Forest and Stream Pg. 513-514

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Above we find,

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Nov. 5. 1898 Forest and Stream Pg. 371-372

The Black Grouper or Jewfish.

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Roger Scruton – Why Beauty Matters (2009) from Mirza Akdeniz on Vimeo.

Click here for another site on which to view this video.

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Vishnu as the Cosmic Man (Vishvarupa) Opaque watercolour on paper – Jaipur, Rajasthan c. 1800-50

 

CLAIRVOYANCE AND OCCULT POWERS

By Swami Panchadasi

Copyright, 1916

By Advanced Thought Pub. Co. Chicago, Il

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Life insurance certificate issued by the Yorkshire Fire & Life Insurance Company to Samuel Holt, Liverpool, England, 1851. On display at the British Museum in London. Donated by the ifs School of Finance. Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)

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Shooting in Wet Weather

 

Reprint from The Sportsman’s Cabinet and Town and Country Magazine, Vol I. Dec. 1832, Pg. 94-95

To the Editor of the Cabinet.

SIR,

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The Crime of the Congo by Arthur Conan Doyle

 

Man looks at severed hand and foot….for refusing to climb a tree to cut rubber for King Leopold

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Victim of King Leopold of Belgium

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The Cremation of Sam McGee

Robert W. Service (b.1874, d.1958)

 

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Harry Houdini Investigates the Spirit World

The magician delighted in exposing spiritualists as con men and frauds.

By EDMUND WILSON June 24, 1925

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Salmon and Sturgeon Caviar – Photo by Thor

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Why Beauty Matters

Roger Scruton by Peter Helm

This is one of those videos that the so-called intellectual left would rather not be seen by the general public as it makes a laughing stock of the idiots running the artworld, a multi-billion dollar business.

https://archive.org/details/why-beauty-matters-roger-scruton

or Click here to watch

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Ought King Leopold to be Hanged?

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How to Distinguish Fishes

 

Sept. 3, 1898. Forest and Stream Pg. 188-189

How to Distinguish Fishes.

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Mudlarks of London

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Officers and men of the 13th Light Dragoons, British Army, Crimea. Rostrum photograph of photographer’s original print, uncropped and without color correction. Survivors of the Charge.

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Commercial Fried Fish Cake Recipe

Dried Norwegian Salt Cod

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Tobacco as Medicine

The first published illustration of Nicotiana tabacum by Pena and De L’Obel, 1570–1571 (shrpium adversana nova: London).

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Herbal Psychedelics – Rhododendron ponticum and Mad Honey Disease

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Cocillana Syrup Compound

Guarea guidonia

Recipe

5 Per Cent Alcohol 8-24 Grain – Heroin Hydrochloride 120 Minims – Tincture Euphorbia Pilulifera 120 Minims – Syrup Wild Lettuce 40 Minims – Tincture Cocillana 24 Minims – Syrup Squill Compound 8 Gram – Ca(s)ecarin (P, D, & Co.) 8-100 Grain Menthol

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Hebborn Piranesi

Before meeting with an untimely death at the hand of an unknown assassin in Rome on January 11th, 1996, master forger Eric Hebborn put down on paper a wealth of knowledge about the art of forgery. In a book published posthumously in 1997, titled The Art Forger’s Handbook, Hebborn suggests [...] Read more →

Rendering Amber Clear for Use in Lens-Making for Magnifying Glass

by John Partridge,drawing,1825

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The Legacy of Felix de Weldon

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British Craftsmanship is Alive and Well

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The Perfect Salad Dressing

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Producing and Harvesting Tobacco Seed

THE FIRST step in producing a satisfactory crop of tobacco is to use good seed that is true to type. The grower often can save his own seed to advantage, if he wants to.

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Horn Measurement

Jul. 23, 1898 Forest and Stream, Pg. 65

Horn Measurements.

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The Kalmar War

Wojna Kalmarska – 1611

The Kalmar War

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Arsenic and Old Lace

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The Preparation of Marketable Vinegar

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Furniture Polishing Cream

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Catholic Religious Orders

Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the mendicant Order of Friars Minor, as painted by El Greco.

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Books Condemned to be Burnt

BOOKS CONDEMNED TO BE BURNT.

By

JAMES ANSON FARRER,

LONDON

ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW

1892

———-

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Seeds for Rootstocks of Fruit and Nut Trees

Citrus Fruit Culture

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The Shirk – An Old but Familiar Phenomena

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The Charge of the Light Brigade

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Copper Kills Covid-19 and the Sun is Your Friend

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Mrs. Beeton’s Poultry & Game – Choosing Poultry

To Choose Poultry.

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Wine Making

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Sea and River Fishing

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BILLESDEN COPLOW POEM

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Abingdon, Berkshire in the Year of 1880

St.Helen’s on the Thames, photo by Momit

 

From a Dictionary of the Thames from Oxford to the Nore. 1880 by Charles Dickens

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Pickled Eels

Vintage woodcut illustration of a Eel

 

This dish is a favorite in Northern Europe, from the British Isles to Sweden.

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The Age of Chivalry

KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS

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The Flying Saucers are Real by Donald Keyhoe

It was a strange assignment. I picked up the telegram from desk and read it a third time.

NEW YORK, N.Y., MAY 9, 1949

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A Cure for Distemper in Dogs

 

The following cure was found written on a front flyleaf in an 1811 3rd Ed. copy of The Sportsman’s Guide or Sportsman’s Companion: Containing Every Possible Instruction for the Juvenille Shooter, Together with Information Necessary for the Experienced Sportsman by B. Thomas.

 

Transcript:

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Click here to read The First Greek Book by John Williams White

The First Greek Book - 15.7MB

IN MEMORIAM

JOHN WILLIAMS WHITE

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Popular Mechanics Archive

Click here to access the Internet Archive of old Popular Mechanics Magazines – 1902-2016

Click here to view old Popular Mechanics Magazine Covers

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Gold and Economic Freedom

by Alan Greenspan, 1967

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense-perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire — that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument [...] Read more →

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King James Bible – Knights Templar Edition

Full Cover, rear, spine, and front

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A General Process for Making Wine

A General Process for Making Wine.

Gathering the Fruit Picking the Fruit Bruising the Fruit Vatting the Fruit Vinous Fermentation Drawing the Must Pressing the Must Casking the Must Spirituous Fermentation Racking the Wine Bottling and Corking the Wine Drinking the Wine

GATHERING THE FRUIT.

It is of considerable consequence [...] Read more →

A Creative Approach to Saving Ye Olde Cassette Tapes

Quite possibly, the most agonizing decision being made by Baby Boomers across the nation these days is what to do with all that vintage Hi-fi equipment and boxes full of classic rock and roll cassettes and 8-Tracks.

I faced this dilemma head-on this past summer as I definitely wanted in [...] Read more →

The Character of a Happy Life

How happy is he born and taught. That serveth not another’s will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill

Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untied unto the world by care Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance [...] Read more →

AB Bookman’s 1948 Guide to Describing Conditions

AB Bookman’s 1948 Guide to Describing Conditions:

As New is self-explanatory. It means that the book is in the state that it should have been in when it left the publisher. This is the equivalent of Mint condition in numismatics. Fine (F or FN) is As New but allowing for the normal effects of [...] Read more →

Glimpses from the Chase

From Fores’s Sporting Notes and Sketches, A Quarterly Magazine Descriptive of British, Indian, Colonial, and Foreign Sport with Thirty Two Full Page Illustrations Volume 10 1893, London; Mssrs. Fores Piccadilly W. 1893, All Rights Reserved.

GLIMPSES OF THE CHASE, Ireland a Hundred Years Ago. By ‘Triviator.’

FOX-HUNTING has, like Racing, [...] Read more →

Tuna and Tarpon

July, 16, l898 Forest and Stream Pg. 48

Tuna and Tarpon.

New York, July 1.—Editor Forest and Stream: If any angler still denies the justice of my claim, as made in my article in your issue of July 2, that “the tuna is the grandest game [...] Read more →