Gainsborough Dupont

Gainsborough Dupont (20 December 1754 – 20 January 1797) was a British artist, the nephew and pupil of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.

Portrait of Gainsborough Dupont by Thomas Gainsborough, now in Tate Britain

Dupont has been speculated to be the subject of "The Blue Boy" (1770) by Thomas Gainsborough.^[1]

Biography

Gainsborough Dupont - A Wooded Landscape with Cattle and Herdsman

Dupont was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 20 December 1754^[2] the eldest son of Thomas Gainsborough's sister Sarah, and her husband Philip Dupont. In 1772 he was apprenticed to Gainsborough, for whom he continued to work until the latter's death in 1788. He was the only assistant Gainsborough is ever known to have employed.^[2][3] He also trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where he became a student in March 1775.^[2]

Dupont took over Gainsborough's studio in Schomberg House in 1788, and moved to Bloomsbury in 1793, following the death of Gainsborough's widow.^[2] He painted portraits and landscapes in a style of similar to that of his uncle, and also landscapes with architectural ruins, in which he imitated Nicolas Poussin. His principal work is a large picture containing the portraits of the elder brethren of Trinity House, which is in their court-room on Tower Hill.^[4]

Prints

From 1779 onwards, Dupont made a series of mezzotints after Gainsborough's portraits.^[2] They include:^[4]

• George III., full length.
• Queen Charlotte, full length.
• The Princess Royal, and the Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth, full length.
• George, Lord Rodney, full length.
• General Conway, full length.
• Colonel St. Leger, full length.
• Rev. Sir Henry Bate Dudley, Bart..
• Rev. Richard Graves, half-length, oval.

Death

Dupont died in London on 20 January 1797,^[2] aged 42. He was buried in Kew churchyard in the same grave as Thomas Gainsborough.^[5]

Works

• 
  The three eldest daughters of George III, Victoria and Albert Museum
• 
  John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute, 1784, Figge Art Museum
• 
  Anne Elizabeth Cholmley, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  George III of the United Kingdom, Royal Collection
• 
  William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, National Portrait Gallery, London
• 
  William Pitt the Younger
• 
  Halt of Traveling Peasants by a Woodside, ca. 1790, now in the Brooklyn Museum

References

1. Solomon, Tessa (4 February 2022). "Why Thomas Gainsborough’s Iconic ‘Blue Boy’ Was Once the Most Famous Painting in the World". Artnews. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
2. "Dupont, Gainsborough" (Quoting [Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 63-64). National Gallery of Art, Washington. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
3. "Gainsborough Dupont c.1770–5". Tate. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
4. Bryan 1886–89
5. Brayley, Edward Wedlake (1844). The History of Surrey, Volume 3, Part 1. Dorking and London. p. 157.

Sources

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Dupont, Gainsborough". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.

External links

• 38 artworks by or after Gainsborough Dupont at the Art UK site