Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/189

Agasse and took other unwarrantable liberties with the object of disguising the fraud. The unhappy result of this tinkering of the original design was that numerous subsequent antiquaries were victims of the deception. Mr. Overall is of opinion that Vertue, having become possessed of the parts of a copy of the map made by some unknown Dutch engraver in the reign of William III, caused them to be ‘tinkered,’ probably for the purpose of deceiving his antiquarian friends. Of course the numerous copies of the spurious map issued by Vertue are of little or no value; but lovers of antiquity may now consult a correct facsimile of Agas's original plan which has been published with the following title:

‘Civitas Londinum. Ralph Agas. A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and parts adjacent in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, published in fac-simile from the original in the Guildhall Library, with a biographical account of Ralph Agas and a critical and historical examination of the work and of the several so-called reproductions of it by Vertue and others. By William Henry Overall, F.S.A., Librarian to the Corporation of London. The fac-simile by Edward J. Francis.’ Lond. 1874, 4to.

Agas likewise executed a plan of Dunwich, in Suffolk, which was engraved for Thomas Gardner's history of that town (1744). The original afterwards came into the possession of Mr. David Elisha Davy, the Suffolk antiquary. Agas's ‘Supervisio Manerii de Comerde Magna, alias Abbas Haule, co. Suff.’ is preserved in MS. Sloan. 3664.

[Overall's Biography of Agas; Overall's paper read before Society of Antiquaries, Dec. 11, 1873; MS. Lansd. 73, f. 107; 84. f. 69; 165, f. 91; MS. Addit. 12497, f. 342, 346; 19165, f. 127; Biog. Dict., Soc. D. U. K.; Gent. Mag. N.S. xii. 349, 463, 592, xxxv. 468, 578; Bolton Corney, on the New [Rose's] Biog. Dict. (1839), 23, 31–34; Gough's British Topography; Macray's Annals of the Bodleian Library, 335; Dodd's Connoisseur's Repertory, vol. i.; Brayley's Londiniana, i. 81*–84*; MS. Addit. 19165, f. 127; Notes and Queries, 3rd series, xii. 504; Gardner's Historical Account of Dunwich (1744); Ames's Typog. Antiquities, ed. Herbert; MS. Sloan. 3664; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Stanley (1849), p. 679.]   AGASSE, JAMES LAURENT (d. 1846?), animal and landscape painter, was born at Geneva, and received his first instruction in the public art school of that city. Whilst still under twenty he went to Paris, in order that there, in the veterinary school, he might make himself fully acquainted with the anatomy of the horse and other animals. He seems to have subsequently returned to Switzerland. The ‘Tübinger Morgenblatt’ (1808, p. 876) says that ‘Agasse, the celebrated animal painter, now in England, owed his fortune to an accident. About eight years ago, he being then in Switzerland, a rich Englishman asked him to paint his favourite dog which had died. The Englishman was so pleased with his work that he took the painter to England with him.’ Nagler says that he was one of the most celebrated animal painters at the end of the last and the beginning of this century. In Meusel's ‘Neue Miscellaneen’ (viii. 1052 et seq.), a comparison is instituted between Agasse and Wouvermans, wholly in favour of the former. In that partial article much is said of his extreme devotion to art, of his marvellous knowledge of anatomy, of his special fondness for the English racehorses, and his excellence in depicting them. He appears first in our Academy catalogues in 1801 as the exhibitor of the ‘Portrait of a Horse,’ and continued to exhibit more or less until 1845—a fact inconsistent with Nagler's statement that he died ‘about’ 1806. In the catalogues his name is given as J. L. Agasse or Agassé. The number of times Agassé changed his address confirms Redgrave's assertion that ‘he lived poor and died poor.’ The writer of the panegyric already quoted says, however, that it was not for bread or for gain that he laboured, but that he was urged forward by the resistless force of natural genius. Altogether there is sufficient evidence that he was in his day a noteworthy painter, but no material for an unbroken record of his life.

[Nagler, Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, 1872, gives an account inter alia of his engraved works; Füssli, Neue Zusätze zu dem allgemeinen Künstler-Lexicon; Tübingen Morgenblatt, 1808, p. 876; Meusel, Neue Miscellaneen, viii. 1052; Fiorillo, Geschichte der Mahlerey, v. 841, speaks of Agasse and Charles Ansell as the most celebrated English animal painters; Redgrave's Dictionary.]  AGELNOTH. [See Ethelnoth (DNB00).]

 AGGAS, EDWARD (fl. 1564–1601), bookseller and printer, son of Robert Aggas, of Stoke-near-Nayland, in Suffolk, and most likely a relative of Ralph Aggas [see Agas, Radulph (DNB00)], who was a native of the same place. He was apprenticed to Humphrey Toy, stationer and citizen of London, for nine years, from Easter 1564, and probably took his freedom of the company about the period covered by the break in the records. We find him taking apprentices himself in 1577 and 1580, and down to 1601 his name appears from