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WAAGEN, Gustav Friedrich, a distinguished German art-critic and writer on art, was born at Hamburg, February 11, 1794. The son of a painter, he early studied the principles of design; but after having served with the German army of deliverance during 1813-14, he entered the university of Breslau. His purpose was to study art historically, and after completing his college course and visiting the principal galleries of Germany and the Netherlands he established himself at Munich, where he published in 1822 his essay on Hubert and John van Eyck, and some minor works. In 1823 he was appointed conservator to the Berlin museum, and in 1832 keeper of the portrait gallery. The rearrangement of the national pictures being intrusted to him, he for the first time carried out a complete, well-considered classification according to schools and order of time, the great value of which is acknowledged by nearly all students. He also greatly improved the catalogues. In 1837 he published in four volumes his "Kunstwerke und Künstler in England und Frankreich;" and in 1843-45 his "Kunstwerke und Künstler in Deutschland." An English translation of the former work appeared in 1838; but Dr. Waagen having again visited England, and examined more at leisure the various collections, he added so greatly to it as to render the new edition in fact a new work. This was published in 3 vols. 8vo, 1854, under the title of "Works of Art and Artists in England." A supplementary volume, the result of another visit to England, was published in 1857. It is by far the most complete account extant of the contents of the private as well as public collections of art in this country. He afterwards published in English a "Guide to the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition," and remodelled Kugler's German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools of Painting. In the Berlin university he delivered an elaborate course of lectures on the history of art. Died in 1868.—J. T—e.
WACE, variously spelt Gace, Gasse, and in several other ways, is now understood to have been the christian name (a vernacular form of Eustace) of the Anglo-Norman poet of whom it was once supposed to have been the surname, while Robert was generally prefixed to it as his christian name. "Master Wace" is the appellation which he uniformly bestows upon himself. He was born about 1112, and, according to his own account, in the island of Jersey, from which he was taken, when a child, to Caen. There he received his earlier education, and after studying in France (as distinguished from Normandy), probably at Paris, he returned to and settled at Caen, where he was long a "clerc lisant," and composed his principal works. For these he was made by Henry II. a prebend of the cathedral church of Bayeux. This is his own account of himself in an autobiographical passage of the "Roman de Rou." His father is sometimes said to have been one of the barons who accompanied William the Conqueror in the invasion of England. From the records of the church of Bayeux, it is known that he held his canonry from 1161 to 1171. Wace is said to have died in England in 1184. The first, in point of time, of Wace's more important works, is the "Roman de Brut," a poem of fifteen thousand lines. It is mainly a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum, then recently published, and derives its title from the Trojan Brutus, the supposed colonizer of these islands. Wace's is the earliest extant Norman-French version of Geoffrey's work, and his own additions are perhaps taken from tradition. "His knowledge," says Mr. Wright, "of the local legends of Normandy and Brittany gives him his greatest importance in the eyes of the historian." The "Roman de Brut" was edited by Leroux du Lincy, Rouen, 1836-38. But the most important of Wace's works is "Le Roman de Rou," apparently finished in 1155, a poetical chronicle of the Normans from the settlement of Rollo (Rou) in France to the year 1106. It contains about seventeen thousand lines. In this work Wace shows himself something between the trouvère and the monkish chronicler, and in much of it he follows prose narrators. For much else of it, however, he has drawn upon tradition and the narratives of aged contemporaries. He often visited historical localities to procure information for it. So minute and lively is his account of the invasion of England and the battle of Hastings, that the Bayeux tapestry, it has been maintained, was taken from Wace's poem. In 1827 (Rouen, 2 vols.) the "Roman de Rou" was edited, with notes, by M. Frederic Pluquet, who had published in 1824 a Notice sur la vie et les ecrits de Robert Wace. There are English translations, in prose and in verse, of the section of Wace's work relating to the invasion of England; Master Wace, his Chronicle of the Norman Conquest, from the "Roman de Rou," translated, with notes and illustrations, by Edgar Taylor, Esq., 1827, is the title of the prose version. The other, published in 1860, is entitled The Conquest of England, from Wace's poem of the "Roman de Rou," now first translated into English rhyme, by Sir Alexander Malet, Bart., with the Anglo-Norman text, after Pluquet. For an account of the texts of Wace's principal works, and some notices of his minor writings, the reader is referred to an article, Wace the Trouvère, in No. v. of the last series of the Retrospective Review, November, 1853.—F. E.
* WACHSMUTH, Ferdinand, a celebrated French painter, was born at Mulhausen in 1802. He was a pupil of Baron Gros, on leaving whose atelier he spent some time in Algiers. His early pictures were chiefly of Algerine subjects, some of them representations of French victories. These last attracted the notice of the government, from whom he received numerous commissions. Some of his Algerine pictures are in the gallery at Versailles; also, a "Taking of Fort St. Philip in 1756," &c. He has painted a St. Thomas and some other religious pieces for the government; and religious, historical, and genre subjects for private patrons.—J. T—e.
WACHTER, Johann Georg, a German antiquary, was born at Memmingen, on 7th March, 1673, and died at Leipsic, on 7th November, 1757. After studying at Tübingen, Leipsic, Halle, and Frankfort-on-the-Oder, he settled at Berlin, where he became a member of the Royal Society, and as such received a pension from government. When, however, he was deprived of the latter, he proceeded to Leipsic, where he was appointed librarian to the city, and keeper of the cabinet of medals. His great "Glossarium Germanicum," Leipsic, 1736-37, 2 vols., is a work of the most comprehensive erudition, and still commands the respect of all linguists. Hardly less praise is due to his "Archæologia Nummaria," Leipsic, 1740.—K. E.
WACKERBARTH, August Christoph, Count of, was born in 1662, in Mecklenburg, and was page in the service of the Electress-palatine Wilhelmine Ernestine of Saxony. Subsequently he entered the artillery service, and in 1702 was named major-general of infantry, and took part in the campaigns on the Rhine against the French. In 1704 he undertook the fortification and defence of Haguenau, but unsuccessfully. In 1705 he was raised to the dignity of a count of the empire, and was named by his sovereign, the elector of Saxony, his envoy to Vienna. In the war in the Netherlands Wackerbarth displayed consummate skill, especially before Tournai, and at the siege of Lille, to the successful result of which his efforts mainly contributed (1709). He was sent to Vienna to watch over the interests of the principality of Saxony shortly before the death of
