sculptor, who had come from Antwerp to settle in London, and died there in 1721; subsequently they both worked as assistants to Francis Bird [q. v.] In August 1728 Delvaux, Scheemakers, and Angelis [q. v.] left England for Rome; here Delvaux found employment, especially from the Portuguese minister, and did not return till 1733, two years after his two friends. He soon went to Brussels with a letter from Pope Clement XII to the papal nuncio there, through whom he became in 1734 chief sculptor to the Archduchess Marie Elizabeth and to the emperor Charles VI. On the death of that emperor he became in 1750 chief sculptor to Charles, duke of Lorraine. He resided chiefly at Nivelles, and died there 24 Feb. 1778. Among his works executed in England were the bronze lion, formerly an ornament of Northumberland House, and now at Sion House, Isleworth; a marble statue of Hercules, six feet high, executed for Lord Castlemaine; a bronze statue of Venus at Holkham, &c. For the flower garden at Stowe, Delvaux and Scheemakers, between whom there seems to have been a friendly rivalry, executed two marble groups of Vertumnus and Pomona and Venus and Adonis. They also co-operated in the monuments erected in Westminster Abbey to the Duke of Buckingham, in which Delvaux executed the figure of Time, and to Dr. Hugo Chamberlain (put up in August 1731). There are many important works by him at Brussels, Ghent, Nivelles, and other towns in Belgium. On his return from Rome, while in England, his portrait was painted by Isaac Whood, and engraved in mezzotint by Alexander van Haecken. In 1823 a bust of Delvaux by his pupil, Godecharle, was set up in the council room of the Academy at Ghent. On 5 May 1868 a collection of Delvaux's works was dispersed by auction at Brussels.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters, ed. Dallaway and Wornum; Nagler's Künstler-Lexikon; Immerzeel's Levens en Werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche Kunstschilders, &c.; Vertue's MSS. (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 23069–76); J. T. Smith's Nollekens and his Times; Siret's Journal des Beaux-Arts, 11 April 1868.]
DELVIN, Barons. [See Nugent.]
DEMAINBRAY, STEPHEN CHARLES TRIBOUDET (1710–1782), electrician and astronomer, the original form of whose surname is said to have been Triboudet de Mombray, was son of Stephen Triboudet (descended maternally from Jean Baptist Colbert), who fled from France to Holland on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and thence came over to England with William III. He died soon after the birth of his only son in 1710, and the latter was then placed by an uncle, Captain Demainbray, at Westminster School, where he was boarded in the house of the well-known mathematical lecturer, Dr. Theophilus Desaguliers. At the age of seventeen he married, and then went to the university of Leyden; but his name is not given in the official ‘Album Studiosorum,’ published at Leyden in 1875. In 1740 he removed to Edinburgh, and there lectured with great success on experimental philosophy. There also he took the degree of LL.D., but, strange to say, his name is in this instance also not to be found in the university list of graduates. His discovery of the influence of electricity in stimulating the growth of plants was made while employed in lecturing at Edinburgh, a discovery afterwards claimed by the Abbé Nollet. Priestley, in his ‘History of Electricity’ (London, 1797, p. 140), thus notices this discovery: ‘Mr. Maimbray at Edinburgh electrified two myrtle-trees during the whole month of October 1746, when they put forth small branches and blossoms sooner than other shrubs of the same kind which had not been electrified. Mr. Nollet, hearing of this experiment, was encouraged to try it himself.’ On the outbreak of the rebellion in 1745 Demainbray quitted Edinburgh for a time to serve in the English army as a volunteer, and was present at the battle of Prestonpans, but resumed his academic work in 1746, keeping at the same time a boarding-school for young ladies. From Edinburgh he migrated about 1748 to Dublin, continuing there and lecturing for a year and a half, and then removing to Bordeaux upon the invitation of the Royal Academy there. Very shortly after he went thence to Montpelier, where he became a member of the Academémie des Sciences of Paris. Here, in 1750, his wife died, after whose death, resisting an invitation to go to Madrid, he returned to England, in consequence of a proposal that he should become the tutor of the Prince of Wales (afterwards George III) in mathematics, experimental philosophy, and natural history. On his way homewards he lectured for three months at Lyons. It was about November 1754 that he commenced his work as the prince's tutor, which did not cease until his pupil's accession to the throne, and it was then continued with the newly married Queen Charlotte, who attended his lectures with interest. On the termination of his employment in this capa-
