Francis Bourgeois

Peter Francis Lewis Bourgeois RA (November 1753 – 8 January 1811) was a landscape and history painter, and court painter to king George III of the United Kingdom. He became an art dealer and collector in association with Margaret and Noel Desenfans, and with them founded Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. He was born in Britain of Swiss ancestry.

Bourgeois was born in London in November 1753 (or, according to Royal Academy records, in 1756). He was the son of Isaac Emanuel Bourgeois, a prosperous emigre Swiss watchmaker, and Elizabeth Bourgeois (née 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 23, Bourgeois made a tour of Europe. When in Warsaw he met bishop Michal Jerzy Poniatowski, primate of Poland and brother of 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 and was elected a full member on 11 February 1793, when he donated a landscape painting as his diploma work.

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

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