Sir Peter Francis Lewis Bourgeois RA (November 1753 – 8 January 1811) was a landscape painter and history painter, and court painter to king George III of the United Kingdom. In the late 18th century he became an art dealer and collector in association with Frenchman Noël Desenfans. The pair were commissioned by Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski to compile a collection of paintings, which they spent five years doing, but Stanisław's exile in 1795 meant the contract could not be completed and they were left with a large collection of paintings. Bourgeois outlived Desenfans and bequeathed the art to Dulwich College with an additional £2000 to build a permanent building to house it. This became the Dulwich Picture Gallery, England's first purpose-built public art gallery. Biography Bourgeois was born in London in November 1753 (or, according to Royal Academy records, in 1756). He was the son of Isaac Emanuel Bourgeois, a prosperous emigre Swiss watchmaker, and Elizabeth Bourgeois (née Gordon or Garden). He had a sister. In 1768, when he was fifteen, his mother died and he and his sister were abandoned by their father. Some time afterward he was taken into the protection of Noel Joseph Desenfans, a writer who had come from France to Britain in 1769. Bourgeois studied painting as a pupil of Philip James de Loutherbourg. In 1776, at the age of 23, Bourgeois made a tour of Europe. When in Warsaw he met bishop Michal Jerzy Poniatowski, primate of Poland and brother of the Polish king, Stanislaw II. In the same year, his protector Noel Desenfans married Margaret Morris, an heiress and sister of the Swansea industrialist, John Morris. By the 1780s Margaret and Noel Desenfans were collecting pictures and discreetly dealing. Bourgeois lived with them at their house in Charlotte (now Hallam) Street, London. In December 1787 Bourgeois was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and was elected a full member on 11 February 1793, when he donated a landscape painting as his diploma work. In 1791 Bourgeois's friend, Michal Poniatowski visited London to commission Bourgeois to paint a portrait of the king Stanislaw (now in Dulwich Picture Gallery). For this Bourgeois was presented with the Polish medal "Merentibus", for which George III allowed him to use the title of 'Sir' in Britain. While in London Poniatowski asked Noel and Margaret Desenfans and Bourgeois to assemble a royal collection for Poland. During