admission of a principle which will confute the particular proposition—a perfectly legitimate form of refutation—but in luring the adversary into confessing the contradictory. In the ordinary use, however, “begging the question” consists in assuming in the premises the conclusion which it is desired to prove.
PETITOT, JEAN (1608–1691), French-Swiss enamel painter,
was born at Geneva, a member of a Burgundian family which had
fled from France on account of religious difficulties. His father,
Faulle, was a wood carver; his mother’s name was Étienette
Royaume. Jean was the fourth son, and was apprenticed to a
Jeweller goldsmith named Pierre Bordier, with whom he struck
up a close friendship. The two friends, dissatisfied with the
progress they made in Geneva, went into France, and after
working for a while with Toutin came to England with letters
of introduction to Turquet de Mayern, physician to Charles I.,
who presented them to the king, for whom they made a St George
for the badge of the order and carried out many commissions
for portraits, amongst others preparing two large ones
representing Rachel de Ruvigny, countess of Southampton, now
at Chatsworth, and Mary Villiers, duchess of Richmond and
Lennox, dated 1643, at one time in the possession of the Crown
and now in the Pierpont Morgan collection. On the execution of
the king, Petitot left England for Paris with the royal household,
Bordier remaining in England and carrying out certain important
commissions for Cromwell and the parliament. On reaching
Paris, Petitot entered into partnership with a goldsmith, Jacques
Bordier, a cousin of Pierre, and it seems probable from recent
research in contemporary documents that the enamel portraits
attributed to Petitot were really the work of the two partners
collaborating, the actual drawing being the work of Petitot,
while for the enamel process Bordier was mainly responsible.
The two painters were given apartments in the Louvre, received
numerous commissions from Louis XIV., and painted portraits
of almost every person of importance in his brilliant court. The
friendship between the two lasted for thirty-five years, and was
only put an end to by Bordier’s death. The enamellers rendered
special political services in France for the republic of Geneva,
and were practically regarded as the official representatives of
the republic, receiving warm thanks from the Syndics for their
diplomatic work. On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
1685, pressure was brought to bear upon Petitot that he should
change his religion The king protected him as long as possible,
and when he was arrested, with his niece, Anne Bordier, sent
Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, to convince the old man of the error of
his ways Eventually, in poor health and great despair, Petitot
placed his signature to an act of abjuration, and Louis XIV.,
unwilling to acknowledge the true reason for the imprisonment
of Petitot and for his liberation, informed one of his sons,
who came to thank him for the pardon given to his father, that
he was willing to fall in for once with “the whim of an old man
who desired to be buried with his ancestors.” In 1687 therefore
Petitot left Paris to return to Geneva, and, after a long and tedious
inquiry, was absolved by the consistory of the church of Geneva
from the crime of which they considered he had been guilty,
and received back to the Huguenot communion in the church of
St Gervais. In Geneva he received a very important commission
from John Sobieski, king of Poland, who required
portraits of himself and his queen. This was followed by numberless
other commissions which the painter carried out. He died
of paralysis on the 3rd of April 1691, while in the very act of
painting on the enamel a portrait of his faithful wife.
Petitot married in 1651 Marguerite Cuper, and Jacques Bordier married in the same year her younger sister Anne Madeleine. He had seventeen children, and for their benefit wrote out a little octavo volume containing some genealogical information, two delightful portraits, one of himself and one of his wife, and many pages occupied with prayers, meditations and religious advice. He also prepared a second manuscript volume of prayers and meditations for the use of his family, and from these two books and the records of the Huguenot societies of France and England information has been obtained respecting the painter and his family.
Of the works of Petitot the most important collection is in the Jones Bequest at the Victoria and Albert Museum. There are many in the Louvre, sixteen at Chantilly, seventeen at Windsor, and others in the collections of Earl Beauchamp, the duke of Rutland, the duke of Richmond, the earl of Dartrey, Mr Alfred de Rothschild and the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Amongst Lord Dartrey’s examples are portraits of Petitot and of his son, and two of the wife of jean Petitot the younger. A second portrait of the artist belongs to the queen of Holland, and another is in the collection of the late Mr Stroehlin of Geneva. In Mr Pierpont Morgan’s collection there are many exceedingly fine examples, but especially three drawings on paper, the only three which appear to have survived, and the large signed miniature of the duchess of Richmond already mentioned, the largest work Petitot ever executed save the one at Chatsworth.
See Petitot et Bordier, by Ernest Stroehlin (Geneva, 1905); “Some New Information respecting Jean Petitot,” by G. C. Williamson, Nineteenth Century and After (January 1908), pp. 98–110; the privately printed Catalogue of the Collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan, vol. iii.; The History of Portrait Miniatures, by G. C. Williamson, vol. ii. (London, 1904). (G. C. W.)
PETITOT, JEAN LOUIS (1652–c. 1730), French enamel
painter, was the eldest son of Jean Petitot (q.v.), and was
instructed in enamelling by his father. Some of his works so closely resemble those of the elder Petitot that it is difficult to
distinguish between them, and he was really the only serious
rival his father ever had. He settled for a while in London,
where he remained till 1682, and painted many enamel portraits of
Charles II. In 1682 he removed to Paris, but in 1695 was back
again in London, where he remained until the time of his death.
His portrait by Mignard is in the museum at Geneva, and another in enamel by himself in the collection of the earl of Dartrey, who also owns two of his wife, Madeleine Bordier, whom he married in 1683. Another portrait believed to represent him is in the collection of Mr Pierpont Morgan. (G. C. W.)
PETITS-CHEVAUX (Fr. for “little horses”), a gambling game
played with a mechanical device consisting of a board perforated
with a number of concentric circular slits, in which revolve, each
independently on its own axis, figures of jockeys on horseback,
distinguished by numbers or colours. The bystanders having
staked their money according to their choice on a board marked
in divisions for this purpose, the horses are started revolving
rapidly together by means of mechanism attached to the board,
and the horse which stops nearest a marked goal wins, every
player who has staked on that horse receiving so many times his
stake. Figures of railway trains and other objects sometimes
take the place of horses. In recent years there has been a tendency
to supplant the petits chevaux at French resorts by the boule
or ball game, on the same principle of gambling, in this a ball
is rolled on a basin-shaped table so that it may eventually settle
in one of a number of shallow cups, each marked with a figure.
PETO, SIR SAMUEL MORTON, Bart. (1809–1889), English contractor, was born at Woking, Surrey, on the 4th of August 1809, and was at an early age apprenticed to his uncle, a London builder, who on his death in 1830 bequeathed the business to Peto and another nephew, Thomas Grissell. The partnership between Peto and Grissell lasted till 1846, amongst the many London buildings erected by the firm being the Reform Club, the Lyceum and St James’s theatres, and the Nelson column. Peto afterwards entered into partnership with Edward Ladd Betts (1815–1872), and between 1846 and 1872 Messrs Peto & Betts carried out many large railway contracts at home and abroad, notably the more important portions of the South-Eastern and of the London Chatham & Dover lines, and, in conjunction with Thomas Brassey, the Grand Trunk railway of Canada, and the London Tilbury & Southend railway. In 1854–1855 Peto and Brassey constructed a railway in the Crimea between Balaclava and the British entrenchments before Sebastopol, charging the British government only the actual out-of-pocket expenses, and for his services in this matter Peto was in 1855 made a baronet. Peto entered parliament as a Liberal in 1847, and, with a few years’ interval, continued there till 1868, when, his firm having been compelled to suspend payment in the financial crisis of 1866, he was forced to resign his seat, though both Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone publicly eulogized his personal character. He died on the 13th of November 1889.
