Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gastineau, Henry
GASTINEAU, HENRY (1791–1876), painter in water-colours, was a student at the Royal Academy. He commenced his artistic career as an engraver, but soon relinquished that branch of art for painting, commencing in oil, but eventually settling down exclusively to water-colour. He joined the Society of Painters in Water-colours in 1818, and then exhibited for the first time. In 1821 he was elected an associate, and in 1823 a full member. He continued to exhibit for fifty-eight years continuously, during which he worked unweariedly at his profession, and with unflagging powers. He exhibited eleven pictures when eighty-five years of age. As a contemporary of David Cox, Copley Fielding, G. Cattermole, S. Prout, and others, he adhered throughout his life to the old style and manner of water-colour painting. Though he cannot be said to have attained the first rank in his profession, he showed great taste and discrimination in the treatment of his subjects, and, if these indicated little variation, he exhibited so refined a feeling for nature that they are highly valued by artists and others as examples of a thoroughly good workman in his art. Gastineau also devoted a great deal of his time to teaching, both privately and at various schools. Early in life he built for himself a house, Norfolk Lodge, in Cold Harbour Lane, Camberwell, and continued to reside there until his death on 17 Jan. 1876 in his eighty-sixth year. He was then the oldest living member of the Old Society of Painters in Water-colours. He left a family, one of whom, Maria Gastineau, was also a water-colour painter of some distinction. At the South Kensington Museum there are by him ‘Penrhyn Castle’ and ‘Netley Abbey.’ Few comprehensive exhibitions of water-colour paintings have been without some example of his art. Some views in Scotland by him were published in lithography, which he seems to have occasionally practised himself. His favourite subject was scenery of a wild and romantic character.
[Art Journal, 1876, p. 106; Builder, 1876, p. 108; The Year's Art, 1885; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880.]