Noel Desenfans and Sir Francis Bourgeois

Informally lounging on a striped settee are two of the founders of Dulwich Picture Gallery: the artist Francis Bourgeois (1753-1811) and the art dealer Noel Desenfans (1741-1807). Bourgeois slouches back, eyes closed and arms folded, while Desenfans appears eagerly engaged in conversation, one foot propped on a footstool and the other on the sofa cushion. As his assured posture here suggests, Desenfans was a larger-than-life character within the London art world. This scene has been described as showing Desenfans and Bourgeois crossing the English Channel to France. They did, after all, foster strong connections with the French art market through which means they acquired many key paintings in the Dulwich Picture Gallery collection. However, it is more likely that the pair are depicted here in their home at Charlotte Street (today, Hallam Street) in London. Their collection was displayed floor-to-ceiling throughout the house, and artists – like the watercolourist Paul Sandby (1730/1-1809) – were invited to visit.  

Sandby began his career drawing and painting landscapes in Scotland, contributing to the military mapping of the Highlands after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. He later moved to London where he took up the post of chief drawing master at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. Sandby made great strides in promoting the medium of watercolour by introducing the printing process known as ‘aquatint’ into Britain. Aquatint allowed tonal ranges to be added to a print, making it well-suited to reproducing watercolours for a mass market. Sandby was a founding member of London’s Royal Academy in 1769 and would have known the founders of Dulwich Picture Gallery – not least Francis Bourgeois, who became an associate member of the Academy in 1787, and a full academician in 1793.