Francis Bourgeois - Biography

Biography

Peter Francis Lewis Bourgeois was born in Britain in November 1753 (or, according to Royal Academy records, in 1756), in London. He was the son of Isaac Emanuel Bourgeois, a prosperous emigre Swiss watchmaker, and Elizabeth Bourgeois (nee Gordon or Garden). He had a sister. In 1768, when he was fifteen, his mother died and he and his sister were abandoned by their father. Some time afterwards he was taken into the protection of Noel Joseph Desenfans, a writer, who had come from France to Britain in 1769.

Bourgeois studied painting as a pupil of Philip James de Loutherbourg.

In 1776, at the age of twenty-three, Bourgeois made a tour of Europe. When in Warsaw he met bishop Michal Jerzy Poniatowski, primate of Poland and brother to the Polish king, Stanislaw II.

In the same year his protector, Noel Desenfans, married Margaret Morris, an heiress and sister of the Swansea industrialist, John Morris. By the 1780s Margaret and Noel Desenfans were collecting pictures and discreetly dealing. Bourgeois lived with them at their house in Charlotte (now Hallam) Street, London.

In December 1787 Bourgeois was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. He would be elected a full member on 11 February 1793, when he donated a Landscape as his diploma work.

In 1791 Bourgeois's friend, Michal Poniatowski, visited London, to commission Bourgeois to paint a portrait of king Stanislaw, for which Bourgeois was presented with the Polish order "Merentibus" (now in Dulwich Picture Gallery, London), for which king George III allowed him to use the title of 'sir' in Britain. While in London Michel Poniatowski asked Noel and Margaret Desenfans and Bourgeois to form a royal collection for Poland. During the next five years Bourgeois would join Margaret and Noel Desenfans touring Europe and buying pictures; but he also continued painting, and in 1794 was appointed landscape-painter to king George.

The collection for king Stanislaw included works by Vernet, Rembrandt, Veronese and others. In 1795 Desenfans was appointed Polish consul general in London; but a few months later king Stanislaw was forced to abdicate, and moved to Russia; and so the dealers were left with the collection on their hands. They attempted to sell it to emperor Alexander I of Russia or to the British Government, but were unsuccessful. In 1799 Desenfans published a Plan for establishing some national galleries in Britain, of which the collection might form a basis, and in 1802 he exhibited the collection in London with a sale Catalogue - but without success. After Noel Desenfans's death in 1807 Margaret Desenfans became the owner of the collection; and when she died in 1809 Bourgeois became sole owner. He shared the Desenfans' wish that the collection should be exhibited publicly, and when he himself died in 1811 he left it to Dulwich College, London, with £10,000 to build a public gallery. Thus was founded Dulwich Picture Gallery - one of the first public art galleries anywhere in Britain. The building was designed by Sir John Soane, who also designed the adjacent mausoleum, in which Sir Francis Bourgeois, Margaret Desenfans and Nöel Desenfans are buried.

A portrait of Bourgeois by William Beechey may be seen at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and another by James Northcote at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. George Dance the Younger also made a pencil portrait of him; and he is included in H. Singleton's 'The Royal Academicians in general assembly 1795' (at the Royal Academy of Arts, London).

Family members of Francis Bourgeois included Victor H. Bourgeois (1864-1935) and Louise Forget-Bourgeois (1830-1914).