Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/412

 art and the fortunate purchase of a picture by Claude, and its advantageous sale to George III, turned his attention to picture dealing. Towards 1789 the troubles of the French noblesse threw many works of art into the market, and Stanislaus, the last king of Poland, commissioned Desenfans to buy paintings for a national collection in that country. Ere these could be paid for, however, Poland was dismembered. Desenfans tried in vain to obtain a recognition of the debt from the Russian government, and in 1802 organised an exhibition of the pictures with a view to their sale, and published what he called a ‘Descriptive Catalogue,’ in 2 vols. This is his chief work, and a fair specimen of the art criticism of the time. There is in it an unlucky observation on envy among artists, which seems to have excited a bitter storm, and brought on the author a fierce pamphlet from the pen of an assailant whom he describes, in a published ‘Letter to Benjamin West,’ as ‘an anonymous assassin styling himself a painter.’

Desenfans was a man of taste and education, and clearly a judicious collector. He published in 1799 ‘A Plan, preceded by a Short Review of the Fine Arts,’ &c., which was in effect a plea for the creation of a national gallery. When he died, on 8 July 1807, he left all his unsold pictures to Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois [q. v.], and Bourgeois considered that the wishes of his dead friend would best be consulted by bequeathing the pictures in turn to Dulwich College, with funds for the erection and maintenance of a public gallery. Mrs. Desenfans (Margaret Morris, sister of Sir John Morris of Claremont, Glamorganshire) further added to the bequest. The three benefactors are entombed in a mausoleum attached to the gallery.

[See account of Dulwich College Picture Gallery in Blanch's Ye Parish of Camerwell, 1875; Cat. of Pictures in Dulwich College Gallery, 1880; Warner's Cat. of the Manuscripts and Muniments of Alleyne's College, 1881. The last two works contain several interesting documents relating to Desenfans. A brief anonymous memoir of him was published in 1812, but it is very meagre. It contains, however, a reprint of two or three of his pamphlets.] 

DES GRANGES, DAVID (fl. 1625–1675), miniature-painter, was probably a Frenchman, and seems to have been originally an engraver. In 1628 he engraved a plate from the picture of St. George by Raphael, now in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, but then in the collection of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, to whom the engraving was dedicated. His name also appears on frontispieces of that time. He seems soon to have turned his hand to miniature painting, as there is a miniature of a lady in the royal collection at Windsor, dated 1639, a copy of Titian's ‘D'Avalos and his mistress’ at Ham House, dated 1640, and a miniature of Inigo Jones in the collection of the Duke of Portland, dated 1641. One of Charles I is at Hardwick House, Bury St. Edmund's. His miniatures are always signed with his initials, D. D. G. In 1651, when Charles II was on his fruitless campaign in Scotland, Des Granges attended him, as limner, and while at St. Johnstone's (where he fell sick) painted several miniatures of Charles, which were distributed among the nobles and other adherents to the royal cause. In 1671 he petitioned Charles for payment of the sums remaining due to him for these services, and his petition seems to have been successful. He describes himself as old and infirm, with failing sight and helpless children, and it is probable that he did not survive very long. Miniatures by Des Granges were exhibited at Manchester in 1857, at the Loan Exhibition, South Kensington, in 1862, and the Exhibition of Miniatures at South Kensington in 1865. At the last-named there were miniatures of Sir Thomas Bodley, Madame de Maintenon (1656), and Catherine of Braganza. Others are in the collections at Windsor Castle, Ham House, Madresfield Court, Wroxton Abbey, &c. His signature has sometimes been ignorantly ascribed to the dwarf Gibson. Sanderson in his ‘Graphice’ (1658) mentions Des Granges among the painters from the life then living, and classes him with Walker, Wright, Lely, and others as ‘rare artizans.’

[Fine Arts Quarterly Review, new ser. i. 446, ii. 218; information from G. Scharf, C.B., F.S.A.; Passavant's Rafael.]  DESMAIZEAUX, PIERRE (1673?–1745), miscellaneous writer, was the son of Louis Desmaizeaux, a minister of the reformed religion at Paillat, Auvergne, who upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes had taken refuge at Avenches in Switzerland. A testimonial preserved among Desmaizeaux's papers, dated 15 Sept. 1688, states his age to be fifteen; and as he speaks of himself as sixty-six in 1739, he must have been born in 1672 or 1673 (not 1666 as usually stated). He studied at the academy of Berne from 1690 to 1695, and at Geneva from 1695 to 1699, receiving high testimonials from the professors at both places. He became known to Bayle, who was naturally accessible to the French refugees, and who during the rest of his life corresponded with Desmaizeaux (see, Letters). Bayle