Henri Gascar
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
during the reign of Charles II
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
. He painted many leading ladies at court, including several of the King's mistresses
Royal mistress
A royal mistress is the historical position of a mistress to a monarch or senior Royal. Some mistresses have had considerable power. The prevalence of the institution can be attributed to the fact that royal marriages were until recent times conducted solely on the basis of political and dynastic...
, before returning to Paris. He subsequently relocated to Rome, where he died in 1701.
Life and work
Gascar was born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, the son of Pierre Gascar, a minor painter and sculptor. Gascar came to England about 1674, probably at the behest of Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles II's favourite mistress. Gascar (or Gascard, as he seems to have spelt his name at first) was already known as a skillful portrait-painter; among the portraits already painted by him was that of Nicolas de Lafond, author of the "Gazette of Holland", painted in 1667, and engraved by Peter Lombart.
The patronage of the Duchess of Portsmouth insured Gascar a rapid success in England. His flamboyant style, contrasting with the stolid English approach, seemed to suit the frivolity of the time and he painted many of the ladies of Charles II
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
's court. His lack of attention to detail in the likeness he made up for by the sumptuous draperies and tawdry adornments around the subject. For a short time he became fashionable, and is said to have amassed a fortune of over £10,000.
Among the portraits painted by him during his time in England were Charles II (engraved by Peter Vanderbank
Peter Vanderbank
Peter Vanderbank or Vandrebanc was a French-English engraver.-Life:Vanderbank was born in Paris in 1649, and studied his art there under Nicolas Poilly. About 1674 he accompanied Henri Gascar to England, and gained a reputation as an engraver of portraits, which he executed on a larger scale than...
); Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth (twice - once engraved by Étienne Baudet
Étienne Baudet
Étienne Baudet, an eminent French engraver, was born at Vineuil, in the department of Loir-et-Cher, about 1636. He was a pupil of Sébastien Bourdon and Cornelis Bloemaert, and afterwards went to Rome, and appears to have adopted the manner of Cornelis Bloemaert in his earliest plates, which are...
); Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland
Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland was an English courtesan and perhaps the most notorious of the many mistresses of King Charles II of England, by whom she had five children, all of which were acknowledged and subsequently ennobled...
(née Villiers), and her daughter, Barbara Fitzroy
Barbara Fitzroy
Lady Barbara FitzRoy was the sixth and youngest child of Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, a mistress of Charles II of England. Although Charles publicly acknowledged her as his child, he was probably not the father...
; Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond
Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond
Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, 1st Duke of Lennox, 1st Duke of Aubigny was the illegitimate son of Charles II of England and his mistress Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth....
; Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond; George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland
George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland
Lieutenant-General George FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, KG, PC was the third and youngest illegitimate son of King Charles II and his mother Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine...
; Nell Gwyn
Nell Gwyn
Eleanor "Nell" Gwyn was a long-time mistress of King Charles II of England. Called "pretty, witty Nell" by Samuel Pepys, she has been regarded as a living embodiment of the spirit of Restoration England and has come to be considered a folk heroine, with a story echoing the rags-to-royalty tale of...
; Sophia Bulkeley
Henry Bulkeley
Henry Bulkeley was an English courtier and politician.Henry Bulkeley was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge and admitted at Gray's Inn in 1654...
(engraved by Robert Dunkarton
Robert Dunkarton
Robert Dunkarton , a mezzotint engraver, was born in London in 1744. He was a pupil of Pether, and painted a few portraits, some of which, as also some portraits in crayons, were exhibited at the Royal Academy and at Spring Gardens until 1779. But his greatest success was gained as a mezzotint...
); Edmund Verney; and Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke
Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke
Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke, 4th Earl of Montgomery was an English nobleman who succeeded to the titles and estates of two earldoms on 8 July 1674 on the death of his brother William Herbert, 6th Earl of Pembroke...
. It is stated that the last-named portrait was done surreptitiously for Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth. A portrait by Gascar of James II
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
as Duke of York was in that king's collection.
Some time before 1680 he was shrewd enough to see that his success was merely due to a fashionable craze, and he retired to Paris before this had entirely ceased. Another possibility is that he left due to increasing anti-French and anti-Catholic feeling in England after the Popish Plot
Popish Plot
The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates that gripped England, Wales and Scotland in Anti-Catholic hysteria between 1678 and 1681. Oates alleged that there existed an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the execution of at...
and Exclusion crisis. On his return to Paris, Gascar was elected a member of the Académie Royale there on 26 October 1680. He subsequently went to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, where he enjoyed a high reputation, and died there 1 January 1701, aged 66.
About 1698 he had painted a portrait of Joseph Ferdinand
Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, Prince of Asturias
Duke Joseph Ferdinand Leopold of Bavaria, Prince of Asturias was the son of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria and his first wife, Maria Antonia of Austria, daughter of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, maternal granddaughter of King Felipe IV of Spain.--Youth--Prince Joseph Ferdinand was...
, the young son of Maximilian II
Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria
Maximilian II , also known as Max Emanuel or Maximilian Emanuel, was a Wittelsbach ruler of Bavaria and an elector of the Holy Roman Empire. He was also the last Governor of the Spanish Netherlands and duke of Luxembourg...
, which was engraved at Munich by Zimmermann. A number of mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...
engravings done from portraits by Gascar, but bearing no engraver's name, have been attributed to Gascar himself. There is no evidence that he really engraved them, but the inscriptions do indicate the work of a non-Englishman. They are interesting as being among the earliest specimens of mezzotint engraving done in England.
External links
- Biography of Henri Gascar (National Maritime Museum)
- James, Duke of York, 1633-1701 (National Maritime Museum)
- Portraits by Henri Gascar (National Portrait Gallery, London}
Attribution