Benjamin Vandergucht
British painter and businessman (1753–1794)
Benjamin Vandergucht or Van der Gucht (1753–1794) was a picture-dealer, restorer and painter.
Life
He was the thirty-second child of Gerard Vandergucht the engraver, and one of twins. He studied drawing in St Martin's Lane Academy, and on the foundation of the Royal Academy he became one of the first students in its schools.
Vandergucht became better known as a picture-restorer and picture-dealer than as an artist, and had patrons in high society. He lived for some time in Pall Mall, London, on the site later occupied by the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. When he inherited his father's house in Upper Brook Street, he built a picture gallery onto his own house. There he stored the high-class pictures in which he dealt, charging one shilling for admission to view the collection.
On 21 September 1794, while Vandergucht was returning from a visit on business to Lord George Cavendish at Chiswick House, the boat in which he was travelling was run down off Barnes Terrace. Though Vandergucht was a swimmer, he was drowned. His collection was sold by auction at Christie's in March 1796.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16859617. VIAF identifies the subject as 15041116. The Library of Congress control number is nr2005020330. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1753, 1794 and 1796.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin Vandergucht” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.