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).
GAUGE, or Gage (Med. Lat. gauja, jaugia, Fr. jauge, perhaps
connected with Fr. jale, a bowl, galon, gallon), a standard of
measurement, and also the name given to various instruments
and appliances by which measurement is effected. The word
seems to have been primarily used in connexion with the process
of ascertaining the contents of wine casks; the name gauger
is still applied to certain custom-house officials in the United
States, and in Scotland it means an exciseman. Thence it was
extended to other measurements, and used of the instruments
used in making them or of the standards to which they were
referred. In the mechanical arts gauges are employed in great
variety to enable the workmen to ascertain whether the object
he is making is of the proper dimensions (see Tool), and similar
gauges of various forms are employed to ascertain and to specify
the sizes of manufactured articles such as wire and screws. A
rain gauge is an apparatus for measuring the amount of the
rainfall at any locality, and a wind gauge indicates the pressure
and force of the wind. The boilers of steam engines are provided
with a water gauge and a steam or pressure gauge. The purpose
of the former is to enable the attendant to see whether or not
there is a sufficient quantity of water in the boiler. It consists of
two cocks or taps communicating with the interior, one being
placed at the lowest point to which it is permissible for the water
to fall, and the other at the point above which it should not rise;
a glass tube connects the two cocks, and when they are both open
the water in this stands at the same level as in the boiler. The
steam gauge shows the pressure of the steam in the boiler. One
of the commonest forms, known as the Bourdon gauge, depends
on the fact that a curved tube tends to straighten itself if the
pressure within it is greater than that outside it. This gauge
therefore consists of a curved or coiled tube of elastic material,
and preferably of elliptic section, connected with the boiler and
arranged with a multiplying gear so that its bending or unbending
actuates a pointer moving over a graduated scale. If the pressure
within the tube is less than that outside it, the tube tends to
bend or coil itself up further; with a pointer arranged as before,
the gauge then becomes a vacuum gauge, indicating how far
the pressure in the vessel to which it is attached is below that
of the atmosphere. In railway engineering the gauge of a line
is the distance between the two rails (see Railway). In nautical
language, a ship is said to have the weather gage when she is
to windward of another, and similarly the lee gage when to
leeward of another; in this sense the word is usually spelt “gage,”
a spelling which prevails in America for all senses.
GAUHATI, a town of British India, in the Kamrup district
of Eastern Bengal and Assam, mainly on the left or south, but
partly on the right bank of the Brahmaputra. Pop. (1901)
14,244. It is beautifully situated, with an amphitheatre of
wooded hills to the south, but is not very healthy. There are
many evidences, such as ancient earthworks and tanks, of its
historical importance. During the 17th century it was taken
and retaken by Mahommedans and Ahoms eight times in fifty
years, but in 1681 it became the residence of the Ahom governor
of lower Assam, and in 1786 the capital of the Ahom raja. On
the cession of Assam to the British in 1826 it was made the seat
of the British administration of Assam, and so continued till
1874, when the headquarters were removed to Shillong in the
Khasi hills, 67 m. distant, with which Gauhati is connected
by an excellent cart-road. Two much-frequented places of
Hindu pilgrimage are situated in the immediate vicinity, the
temple of Kamakhya on a hill 2 m. west of the town, and the
rocky island of Umananda in the mid-channel of the Brahmaputra.
Gauhati is still the headquarters of the district and of
the Brahmaputra Valley division, though no longer a military
cantonment. It is the river terminus of a section of the Assam-Bengal
railway. There are a second-grade college, a government
high school, a law class and a training school for masters.
Gauhati is an important centre of river trade, and the largest
seat of commerce in Assam. Cotton-ginning, flour-milling, and
an export trade in mustard seed, cotton, silk and forest produce
are carried on. Gauhati suffered very severely from the earthquake
of the 12th of June 1897.
GAUL, GILBERT WILLIAM (1855–), American artist,
was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on the 31st of March 1855.
He was a pupil of J. G. Brown and L. E. Wilmarth, and he
became a painter of military pictures, portraying incidents of
the American Civil War. He was elected an associate of the
National Academy of Design in 1880, and in 1882 a full
academician, and in the latter year became a member of the
Society of American Artists. His important works include:
“Charging the Battery,” “News from Home,” “Cold Comfort
on the Outpost,” “Silenced,” “On the Look-out,” and “Guerillas
returning from a Raid.”
GAUL, the modern form of the Roman Gallia, the name
of the two chief districts known to the Romans as inhabited
by Celtic-speaking peoples, (a) Gallia Cisalpina (or Citerior,
“Hither”), i.e. north Italy between Alps and Apennines and
(b) the far more important Gallia Transalpina (or Ulterior,
“Further”), usually called Gallia (Gaul) simply, the land
bounded by the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, the
Atlantic, the Rhine, i.e. modern France and Belgium with parts
of Holland, Germany and Switzerland. The Greek form of
Gallia was Γαλατία, but Galatia in Latin denoted another Celtic
region in central Asia Minor, sometimes styled Gallograecia.
(a) Gallia Cisalpina was mainly conquered by Rome by 222 B.C.; later it adopted Roman civilization; about 42 B.C. it was united with Italy and its subsequent history is merged in that of the peninsula. Its chief distinctions are that during the later Republic and earlier Empire it yielded excellent soldiers, and thus much aided the success of Caesar against Pompey and of Octavian against Antony, and that it gave Rome the poet Virgil (by origin a Celt), the historian Livy, the lyrist Catullus, Cornelius Nepos, the elder and the younger Pliny and other distinguished writers.[1]
(b) Gaul proper first enters ancient history when the Greek colony of Massilia was founded (? 600 B.C.). Roman armies began to enter it about 218 B.C. In 121 B.C. the coast from
- ↑ When Cisalpine Gaul became completely Romanized, it was often known as “Gallia Togata,” while the Province was distinguished as “Gallia Bracata” (bracae, incorrectly braccae, “trousers”), from the long trousers worn by the inhabitants, and the rest of Gaul as “Gallia Comata,” from the inhabitants wearing their hair long.
