11.02.1774–03.11.1854
Maxim Gauci
Maxim Gauci (recorded in Malta as Massimo Gauci) was born in Valletta, studied in Rome, lived in Paris and from 1809 until his death worked in London. His workshop printed lithographic plates for botanical publications, among them the book on the orchids of Mexico and Guatemala, with the largest lithographic sheets of its time. Many of his portraits are held by the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Biography
The National Portrait Gallery in London holds a good many of Gauci’s portrait lithographs. This is the part of his legacy that can be seen at once, without a visit to a library reading room.
He was born on 11 February 1774 in Valletta and at birth bore the Italian name Massimo. Another year of birth, 1776, turns up in the sources, but 1774 is the more usual. His first teacher was a Maltese painter, Michele Busuttil. Then, on the recommendation of Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, Grand Master of the Order of Malta, the young man was sent to study at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. From Rome Gauci moved to Paris and married there in 1804. In France he was known as Maxime. He worked in the studio of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, a well-known portrait miniaturist, and in his early years painted portrait miniatures himself. Lithography was then a new technique, and his name would later be linked with it. Then came Egypt and the Middle East; I could find no details of the journey, neither route nor dates. In 1809 he settled in London. He never returned to Malta, but relatives and other Maltese came to visit him in England.
In London Gauci opened a lithographic workshop. It produced plates for botanical works: Nathaniel Wallich’s “Plantae Asiaticae Rariores”, James Bateman’s “Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala” (1837–1843), and the second volume of plates for John Forbes Royle’s work on the botany of the Himalayas and the flora of Kashmir (1840). For Bateman’s “Orchidaceae” the workshop printed what are said to be the largest lithographic sheets ever made. The historian of botanical illustration Wilfrid Blunt wrote of Gauci as a master of the process: his tone ranged from the palest silvery grey to the richest velvet black, and his outline never looked mechanical or obtrusive.
He worked on portraits all his life: first miniatures, later lithographed portraits.
His sons carried on the work: William Gauci also became a printer and engraver and worked a great deal on landscape prints, while Paul Gauci, a landscape painter, according to some accounts took over his father’s workshop. Gauci kept working until his eyesight began to fail. He died in London on 3 November 1854, at about eighty, and was buried in the Gauci family grave on the western side of Highgate Cemetery.
Profile notes