Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/139

 The Chase, the Turf, and the Road, ed. 1837; and information kindly afforded by the present Lord Barnard.]

VANE-STEWART, CHARLES WILLIAM, third (1778-1854). [See ]

VAN HAECKEN (VAN AKEN), JOSEPH (1699?–1749), painter, was born at Antwerp about 1699. He came over to England at about the age of twenty, and was a good painter of history and portraits. He found more profitable employment, however, as painter of drapery and other accessories for (1701–1779) [q. v.], (1713–1784) [q. v.], and other portrait-painters. In this branch of art he showed remarkable excellence. Van Haecken died on 4 July 1749, and was buried in St. Pancras Church, leaving a widow, but no children. Hudson and Ramsay were executors of his will. Hogarth is stated to have drawn a caricature of a mock-funeral procession of Van Haecken, showing the distress of the painters at the loss of their indispensable assistant. Ramsay painted Van Haecken's portrait. A few portraits by Van Haecken himself were engraved in mezzotint by his younger brother, Alexander van Haecken (b. 1701), who lived with him and shared his work. A number of portraits by Amiconi, Hudson, Ramsay, and others were engraved in mezzotint by the younger Van Haecken, who carried on his brother's practice after his death.



VANHOMRIGH, ESTHER (1690-1723), ‘Vanessa.’ [See under ]

VAN HUYSUM, JACOB (JAMES), (1687?–1746), flower-painter, born at Amsterdam about 1687, was brother of the celebrated flower-painter, Jan Van Huysum, and son of Justus Van Huysum (1659–1716), a painter, of Amsterdam. He painted in the same manner and in as close an imitation of his brother's work as possible. Though he never attained the same excellence, his work, especially in England, has often been mistaken for his brother's. Van Huysum came to England about 1721, in which year he was living in the house of a patron, Mr. Lockyear of the South Sea House. Subsequently he was patronised by Sir Robert Walpole, who received him as an inmate of his house at Chelsea, and employed him to paint flower-pieces and copies from old masters for the decoration of the great house at Houghton in Norfolk. Through his drunken and dissolute habits he lost this and other patronage, and died in obscurity in 1746.



VANKOUGHNET, PHILIP MICHAEL SCOTT (1822–1869), chancellor of Upper Canada, born on 21 Jan. 1822 at Cornwall, Ontario, was the eldest son of Lieutenant-colonel Philip Vankoughnet by Harriet Sophia, daughter of Matthew Scott of Carrick-on-Suir, co. Tipperary. The family, which was originally named Von Gochnat, emigrated from Colmar in Alsace in 1750, and settled on the site of what is now the town of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Michael Vankoughnet (1751–1832), grandfather of Philip Michael, having been proscribed as a loyalist during the American revolution, took refuge in 1783 at Cornwall in Stormont County, Ontario. Here he died in October 1832, leaving three sons and a daughter, the issue of his marriage with Eve, daughter of John Bolton Empey. The eldest son, Philip Vankoughnet (1790–1873), born on 2 April 1790, served at the battle of Chrysler's Farm, 11 Nov. 1813, and commanded the fifth battalion of the Canadian incorporated militia at the battle of the Windmill, Prescott, 13 Nov. 1837, during Riel's rebellion. He was also for thirty years a member of the legislature of Upper Canada, and upon its union with the Lower Province in 1840 became a member of the Legislative Council. At his death he was chairman of the board of arbitrators for the dominion. He died at Cornwall in Canada on 17 May 1873, leaving eight sons and five daughters.

The eldest son, Philip Michael, served under his father in 1837. He was called to the Canadian bar in 1843, and took silk six years later. He soon acquired the largest practice in Upper Canada, and his entrance on political life was made at a large pecuniary sacrifice. In November 1856 he became the first member of the legislative council for Rideau. In the previous May he had been appointed president of the executive council and minister of agriculture in the Taché administration, on the resignation of Sir [q. v.] Vankoughnet reorganised his department, made it thoroughly efficient, and, in particular, took effective measures to check the ravages of the Hessian fly and weevil. In September 1858 he became chief commissioner of crown