(b Brussels, 27 May 1739; d Léognan, Gironde, 11 April 1799). Flemish painter and engraver, active in France. He trained at the Antwerp Academie and under the painter Martin Geeraedts (1707–91); this Flemish training had a decisive influence on his style throughout his career. Early on he found a generous patron in Charles de Lorraine (1712–80), Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, who paid for him to make a visit to Rome, where he remained for 17 years apparently without going through any significant artistic development. His only known works of that time are some reproductive engravings of mediocre quality, which the artist completed for the Scottish painter and dealer Gavin Hamilton. Lonsing left Rome in 1778 and spent a few years in Lyon, finally moving in 1783 to Bordeaux, where, until the Revolution (1789–95), he built up an important practice as a portrait painter. Among his portraits of the 1780s are those of Maréchal de Mouchy (Bordeaux, Mus. A. Déc.) and Lt-Gen. de Larose (Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.), both formal works that show Baroque influence. Like many artists, Lonsing lost his former patrons as a result of the Revolution. He moved to Paris, where he lived in poverty, although he produced an aquatint engraving of Jean-Baptiste Lacombe in 1794. Not until 1798 did he receive another major commission, from a prosperous merchant of Bordeaux: the painted double portrait of J. B. Mareilhac and his Wife, in which the young couple are depicted with their arms around each other in the grounds of Mareilhac’s château, La Louvière, at Léognan near Bordeaux. This portrait, like the drawings and other portraits Lonsing completed during the Revolution, displays a Romantic sensibility. He was working on the decoration of the salon at La Louvière when he died.

• Lonsing, François-Louis
  • Bordeaux, §2: Art life and organization