Balthazar Nebot
{{short description|English painter}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
Balthazar or Balthasar Nebot, was a painter active in England between 1729 and 1765.{{sfn|Tate Gallery|1987|p=245}}
Life
File:Nebot covent garden market clean.jpg by Balthazar Nebot, 1737]]
Nebot is first recorded in London in 1729–30. He is generally assumed to have been be of Spanish birth or descent, but the details of his life are obscure. He married in London in 1729 or 1730, and there are various records of members of his family in the registers of St Paul's, Covent Garden. They include the burials of five of his children between 1731 and 1739, and of his wife Mary in 1742.{{cite book|title=The Registers of St Paul's Church, Covent Garden. Volume IV — Burials 1653–1752|editor=Hunt, William H.|publisher=The Harleian Society|year=1908|url=https://archive.org/details/registersofstpau36stpa}}
File:Foolish Sam, a mentally defective man in London Wellcome L0071519.jpg
He was a painter of urban scenes and topographical landscapes,{{sfn|Tate Gallery|1987|p=116}} whose paintings of markets are considered to be close in style to those of the Dutch painter Peter Angelis who had also worked in Covent Garden.{{cite web|url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/balthazar-nebot-398/text-artist-biography|title=Balthazar Nebot active 1730–1765 |publisher=Tate Gallery |url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924122251/http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/balthazar-nebot-398/text-artist-biography |archive-date=2015-09-24 }} He painted several versions of a picture of the Piazza at Covent Garden, seen from the south-east: one of these, now in the collection of the Tate Gallery is dated 1737. They incorporated genre scenes featuring familiar local characters of the time. Ellis Waterhouse wrote that Nebot's figures "owe something to Hogarth, but are wholly lacking in satirical overtones".{{cite book|title=Painting in Britain 1530–1790|publisher=Yale University Press|first=Ellis|last=Waterhouse|year=1994|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cd8A1z2U9DMC&pg=PA162|page=162|isbn=0300058330}} Nebot also made an etching of "Foolish Sam", a mentally handicapped man well known in Leicester Fields.{{cite web|url=http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1768429|title=Wellcome Library Catalogue - Search results for "b1768429"|publisher=Wellcome Collection|access-date=12 January 2014|archive-date=16 January 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140116085950/http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk/record=b1768429|url-status=dead}}
In the 1730s he painted a set of eight scenes recording the new formal gardens at Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, for Sir Thomas Lee (1687–1749). A unique record of a country estate and garden of the period, they include detailed depictions of the Lee family, their guests and employees. They are now in the collection of the Buckinghamshire County Museum.{{cite web| url=http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/bcc/museum/hartwell_paintings.page? |title=Paintings of Hartwell House gardens by Balthasar Nebot|publisher=Buckinghamshire County Council}}
In 1741 he painted a portrait of Thomas Coram, the founder of the Foundling Hospital, who is shown coming across an abandoned baby in a basket by the roadside, with the hospital in the background.{{Cite web|publisher= National Portrait Gallery|url=http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/explore/by-publication/kerslake/early-georgian-portraits-catalogue-coram.php|title=Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Coram|access-date= 8 August 2013 }} Engravings after it were made in 1751 and 1817.
He made some anatomical drawings; the University of Glasgow owns some sketches and finished drawings of the female pelvis, as dissected by Robert Nesbitt in 1746. Two of the drawings were engraved by G. Van de Gucht, and all were later acquired by the surgeon William Hunter.{{cite web|title=Item Details MS Hunter HF191|publisher= University of Glasgow |url=http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/manuscripts/search/detail_c.cfm?ID=63186}} Nesbitt was one of the governors of the Foundling Hospital, and is recorded as the owner of Nebot's portrait of Thomas Coram on the engraving of 1751.
He painted fourteen views of Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, one of which is dated 1762.
References
{{Reflist}}
Sources
- {{cite book|title=Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting 1700–1760|url=https://archive.org/details/mannersmoralshog0000einb|url-access=registration|publisher=Tate Gallery|location=London|year=1987 |ref={{Sfnref|Tate Gallery|1987}}}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nebot, Baltasar}}
Category:18th-century English painters
Category:English male painters
Category:People from Covent Garden