(b London, 1696; d London, 18 March 1776). Illustrator and picture dealer, son of (1) Michael Vandergucht. He studied with his father and Louis Chéron and became a prolific book illustrator. Among his numerous engravings are his frontispiece for Josiah Burchett’s Complete History of the Most Remarkable Transactions at Sea (1720), based on a rare book design by James Thornhill, and his illustrations for Samuel Croxall’s Select Collection of Novels (2/1729) based on works by Joseph Highmore and John Vanderbank. He contributed to some of the more ambitious and unusual illustrated books, such as Lewis Theobald’s edition (2/1740) of Shakespeare, in which Gravelot’s light Rococo designs belie the hearty Englishness of many of Shakespeare’s characters. He also engraved designs after Vanderbank for John, Baron Carteret’s large illustrated edition (1738; Eng. trans., 1742, 5/1788) of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The growing popularity of a French style of engraving practised by Charles Grignion and Bernard Baron gradually depleted his own commissions, and he gave up engraving to become a picture dealer and supplier of artists’ materials, working from a shop in Lower Brook Street, London.

Part of the Vandergucht family

• Vandergucht, Gerard
  • Vandergucht
  • collaboration
    • Stukeley, William
  • groups and movements
    • Hogarth, William, §1(ii): Mature work, 1731–58
  • works
    • Anatomical studies, §3: Illustration in the Baroque and Enlightment periods
    • Vanderbank, John
    • Wright, Edward