Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/867

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 GOSPORT, a fortiﬁed seaport and market town of Hampshire, England, on the western side of Portsmouth harbour, near its mouth, directly opposite and about a mile from Portsmouth, with which it is connected by a floating bridge moved by a steam engine working on two ﬁxed chains. The old fortifications built at the end of last century are now obsolete, and a line of new forts has been erected about two miles from the town, extending from the Solent to the upper part of Portsmouth harbour, with accommo- dation for two regiments of infantry and a brigade of artillery. Near the town is the royal St Clarence victualling yard, with brewery, cooperage, powder-magazines, biscuit- baking establishment, and storehouses for various kinds of provisions for the royal navy. Adjoining this yard there are large Government powder magazines and a laboratory for making fusees and rockets. Within the old fortiﬁca— tions a ﬁne new barracks has been erected with accommo- dation for 1100 men, and another barracks with accommo- dation for 1600 men adjoining it. The principal other buildings are the town-hall and market-place, the church of Holy Trinity, erected in the time of William 111., and the magniﬁcent Haslar naval hospital, capable of containing 2000 patients. Gosport has an extensive establishment for the manufacture of anchors and chain cables, and it is also celebrated for its yacht-building and sail-making establish- ments. The coasting trade is considerable. The town is said to have received its name, Gosport or God’s Port, from Bishop Henry de Blois, who put in here for shelter during a severe storm in. It was then only a small ﬁshing village. According to another supposition its original name was Gorse Port, and it was so called from the gorse and furze with which the commons in the neigh- bourhood were thickly covered. The population in 1871 was 7366.  GOSSART,, born at Maubeuge towards the , is better known to Englishmen by the name of Mabuse than by that of Jenni Gossart, with which he signed some of his pictures, or that of Jennyn van Hennegouwe (Hainault), under which he matriculated in the guild of St Luke, at Antwerp, in. We know nothing of his life before he attained to manhood; but his works at least tell us that he stood in his ﬁrst period under the inﬂuence of artists to whom plastic models were familiar; and this leads to the belief that he spent his youth on the French border rather than on the banks of the Scheldt. In no seat of artistic culture is this feature more conspicuous than at Tournai, Douai, or Yalenciennes, and it may be that in one of these cities Mabuse learnt to com- mingle the study of architecture with the gaudy system of colouring familiar to tinters of stone. Without the subtlety or power of V an der Weyden, he had this much in common with the great master of Tournai and Brussels, that his compositions were usually framed in architectural back- grounds; and this marked characteristic is strongly displayed in the pictures which he executed in the. But whilst Mabuse thus early betrays his dependence on the masters of the French frontier, he also confesses admiration for the great painters who ﬁrst gave lustre to Antwerp; and in the large altar-pieces of Castle Howard and Seawby, he combines in a quaint and not unskilful medley the sentiment of Memling, the bright and decided contrasts of pigment peculiar to coloured reliefs, the cornered and packed drapery familiar to Van der Weyden, and the bold but Socratic cast of face remarkable in the works of Quentin Matsys. At Scawby he illustrates the legend of the count of Toulouse, who parted with his worldly goods to assume the frock of a hermit. At Castle Howard he represents the Adoration of the Kings, and throws together some thirty ﬁgures on an architectural background, varied in detail, massive in shape, and fanciful in ornament. He surprises us by pompous costume and flaring contrasts of tone. His ﬁgures, like pieces on a chess-board, are often rigid and conventional. The land- scape which shows through the colonnades is adorned with towers and steeples in the minute fashion of Van der Weyden. After a residence of a few years at Antwerp, Mabuse took service with Philip, bastard of Philip the Good, at that time Lord of Somerdyk and admiral of Zeeland. One of his pictures had already become celebrated—a Descent from the Cross (50 ﬁgures) on the high altar of the monastery of St Michael of Tongerloo. Philip of Burgundy ordered Mabuse to execute a replica for the church of Middlcburg ; and the value which was then set on the picture is apparent from the fact that Diirer came expressly to Middleburg to see it. In the altar-piece perished by ﬁre. But its principal features were preserved in a large arras hanging, recently exhibited at the Archaeo- logical Museum of Brussels. In Margaret of Austria sent Philip of Burgundy to Italy to negotiate for the treaty of Cambrai. On this mission he was accompanied by Mabuse ; and by this accident an important revolution was effected in the art of the Netherlands. Mabuse appears to have chieﬂy studied in Italy the cold and polished works of the Leonardesques. He not only brought home a new style, but he also introduced the fashion of travelling to Italy; and from that time till the age of Rubens and Van Dka it was considered proper that all Flemish painters should visit the peninsula. The Flemiugs grafted Italian mannerisms