GAUDRY, JEAN ALBERT (1827-1908), French geologist and palaeontologist, was born at St Germain-en-Laye on the 16th of September 1827, and was educated at the college, Stanislas. At the age of twenty-five he made explorations in Cyprus and Greece, residing in the latter country from 1855 to 1860. He then investigated the rich deposit of fossil vertebrata at Pikermi and brought to light a remarkable mammalian fauna, Miocene in age, and intermediate in its forms between European, Asiatic and African types. He also published an account of the geology of the island of Cyprus (Mém. Soc. Géol. de France, 1862). In 1853, while still in Cyprus, he was appointed assistant to A. d’Orbigny, who was the first to hold the chair of palaeontology in the museum of natural history at Paris. In 1872 he succeeded to this important post; in 1882 he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1900 he presided over the meetings of the eighth International Congress of Geology then held in Paris. He died on the 27th of November 1908. He is distinguished for his researches on fossil mammalia, and for the support which his studies have rendered to the theory of evolution.
Publications.—Animaux fossiles et géologie de l’Attique (2 vols., 1862-1867); Cours de paléontologie (1873); Animaux fossiles du Mont Lebéron (1873); Les Enchaînements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques (Mammifères Tertiaires, 1878; Fossiles primaires, 1883; Fossiles secondaires, 1890); Essai de paléontologie philosophique (1896). Brief memoir with portrait in Geol. Mag. (1903), p. 49.
(H. B. W.)
GAUDY, an adjective meaning showy, very bright, gay, especially with a sense of tasteless or vulgar extravagance, of colour or ornament. The accurate origin of the various senses which this word and the substantive “gaud” have taken are somewhat difficult to trace. They are all ultimately to be referred to the Lat. gaudere, to rejoice, gaudium, joy, some of them directly, others to the French derivative gaudir, to rejoice, and O. Fr. gaudie. As a noun, in the sense of rejoicing or feast, “gaudy” is still used of a commemoration dinner at a college at the university of Oxford. “Gaud,” meaning generally a toy, a gay adornment, a piece of showy jewelry, is more specifically applied to larger and more decorative beads in a rosary.
GAUERMANN, FRIEDRICH (1807-1862), Austrian painter, son of the landscape painter Jacob Gauermann (1773-1843), was born at Wiesenbach near Gutenstein in Lower Austria on the 20th of September 1807. It was the intention of his father that he should devote himself to agriculture, but the example of an elder brother, who, however, died early, fostered his inclination towards art. Under his father’s direction he began studies in landscape, and he also diligently copied the works of the chief masters in animal painting which were contained in the academy and court library of Vienna. In the summer he made art tours in the districts of Styria, Tirol and Salzburg. Two animal pieces which he exhibited at the Vienna Exhibition of 1824 were regarded as remarkable productions for his years, and led to his receiving commissions in 1825 and 1826 from Prince Metternich and Caraman, the French ambassador. His reputation was greatly increased by his picture “The Storm,” exhibited in 1829, and from that time his works were much sought after and obtained correspondingly high prices. His “Field Labourer” was regarded by many as the most noteworthy picture in the Vienna exhibition of 1834, and his numerous animal pieces have entitled him to a place in the first rank of painters of that class of subjects. The peculiarity of his pictures is the representation of human and animal figures in connexion with appropriate landscapes and in characteristic situations so as to manifest nature as a living whole, and he particularly excels in depicting the free life of animals in wild mountain scenery. Along with great mastery of the technicalities of his art, his works exhibit patient and keen observation, free and correct handling of details, and bold and clear colouring. He died at Vienna on the 7th of July 1862.
Many of his pictures have been engraved, and after his death a selection of fifty-three of his works was prepared for this purpose by the Austrian Kunstverein (Art Union).