- Also known as
-
Gravelot
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primary name: Gravelot, Hubert François Bourguignon
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other name: Bourguignon, Hubert François
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other name: Gravelot
- Details
- individual; painter/draughtsman; printmaker; French; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1699-1773
- Biography
- Book illustrator and French engraver, draughtsman and painter born Paris 1699; formerly Hubert François Bourguignon, probably taking the name Gravelot from his godfather; brother of geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville; trained in the studios of Jean Restout the Younger and François Boucher (qq.v.); worked in England 1732-45, producing work for more than fifty publications ranging from ornamental surrounds to major commissions such as twenty-seven plates for John Dryden's Works (1735), sixteen plates for John Gay's Fables of 1738, musical and theatrical illustrations such as thirty-six plates for the second edition of Theobald's Works of Shakespeare, as well as illustrations for Samuel Richardson's 'Pamela' (which helped to popularize the novel), designs for trade cards, bookplates, fans, badges, invitation cards, gold boxes, watches, watchcases etc; very influential, his designs were still used on Bow and Chelsea porcelain after his departure from England; worked at St. Martin's Lane Academy with Hogarth and Hayman (whose work he influenced); became friend of David Garrick; taught Thomas Major, Charles Grignion and Thomas Gainsborough; as a result of the anti-French sentiment in the war returned to Paris in 1745, but continued to supply the London market from France.
In Paris became the leading designer of book illustrations. Among his most famous works were illustrations for Boccaccio's 'Decameron' (1757-61), Rousseau's 'La nouvelle Héloïse' (1761), Voltaire's 'Théâtre de Pierre Corneille' (1764), the 'Almanach iconologique' (1765-79), Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (1767-71) and Tasso's 'Gerusalemme liberata' (1771); twice married but childless; died in 1773 and buried in the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois in Paris.
- Bibliography
- M. G. Sullivan, 'Gravelot , Hubert-François (1699-1773)', ODNB, Oxford, 2004;
H. Hammelmann, 'Book Illustrators in eighteenth-century England', ed. T.S.R. Boase (1975);
M. Snodin and E. Moncrieff, 'Rococo: art and design in Hogarth's England' (1984);
B. Allen, 'Francis Hayman', (1987);
S. Fister, R. Jones and O. Meslay, 'Young Gainsborough (1997) (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery London 29 Jan - 31 March 1997, Norwich, 19 April -15 June 1997 and The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 21 June - 17 Aug. 1997.);
see unpublished notes by E. Croft-Murray in Dept. Prints & Drawings, BM.
