Jacques-Laurent Agasse
{{Short description|Swiss painter (1767–1849)}}
{{no footnotes|date=June 2011}}
File:Portrait de Jacques-Laurent Agasse (1767-1849) à Crevin.jpg, c. 1785]]
File:The nubian giraffe.jpgs sent to Europe by Mehmet Ali Pasha (another was Zarafa). This one was received by George IV in London. The gentleman shown in the top hat is Edward Cross, operator of the menagerie at Exeter Exchange and then Royal Surrey Gardens. Agasse painted many other animals from his collection.]]
Jacques-Laurent Agasse (April 24, 1767 – December 27, 1849) was an animal and landscape painter from Switzerland.
Born at Geneva, Agasse studied in the public art school of that city. Before he turned twenty he went to Paris to study in veterinary school to make himself fully acquainted with the anatomy of horses and other animals. He seems to have subsequently returned to Switzerland. The Tübinger Morgenblatt (1808, p. 876) says that "Agasse, the celebrated animal painter, now in England, owed his fortune to an accident. About eight years ago, he being then in Switzerland, a rich Englishman (George Pitt, later Lord Rivers) asked him to paint his favourite dog (greyhound) which had died. The Englishman was so pleased with his work that he took the painter to England with him."
Nagler says that he was one of the most celebrated animal painters at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. In Johann Georg Meusel's Neue Miscellaneen (viii. 1052 et seq.), he compares Agasse and Wouwermans, wholly in favour of the former. In that partial article much is said of his extreme devotion to art, of his marvelous knowledge of anatomy, of his special fondness for the English racehorses, and his excellence in depicting them. He appears first in the Academy catalogues in 1801 as the exhibitor of the 'Portrait of a Horse', and continued to exhibit more or less until 1845 (contradicting Nagler's statement that he died "about" 1806).
In the catalogues his name is given as J.L. Agasse or Agassé. The number of times Agassé changed his address confirms Redgrave's assertion that "he lived poor and died poor". The writer of the panegyric already quoted says, however, that he did not work for money, but that he was urged forward by the resistless force of natural genius.
Gallery
File:Landing at Westminster Bridge.jpg|Landing at Westminster Bridge, 1818, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur
File:Agasse Quagga.jpg|Male Quagga, early 1800s, Royal College of Surgeons
File:Jacques-Laurent Agasse - The Flower Seller.jpg|Flower Seller, 1822, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur
File:Jacques-Laurent Agasse - The Last Stage on the Portsmouth Road.jpg|The Last Stage on the Portsmouth Road, 1815, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur
File:White Horse in Pasture.jpg|White Horse in Pasture, 1806–1807, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur
File:Jaques-Laurent Agasse Emma Powles.jpg|Emma Powles
File:Jacques-Laurent Agasse - The Wellesley Grey Arabian Led through the Desert - Google Art Project.jpg|The Wellesley Grey Arabian Led through the Desert
File:James Jacques Laurent Agasse (attr) Edinburgh and London Royal Mail.jpg|Edinburgh and London Royal Mail
File:Edward Cross by Agasse.jpg|Edward Cross (1774–1854), zoo proprietor.
File:The Playground (1830) - Jacques Laurent Agasse (Kunstmuseum Winterthur).jpg|The playground
{{DNB Poster|Agasse, James Laurent|James Laurent Agasse}}
References
- {{SIKART|4000008}}
- Nagler, Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, 1872, gives an account inter alia of his engraved works
- Füssli, Neue Zusätze zu dem allgemeinen Künstler-Lexicon
- Tübinger Morgenblatt, 1808, p. 876
- Meusel, Neue Miscellaneen, viii. 1052
- Fiorillo, Geschichte der Mahlerey, v. 841, speaks of Agasse and Charles Ansell as the most celebrated English animal painters
- Redgrave's Dictionary.
External links
{{Commons category|Jacques Laurent Agasse}}
- [http://www.globalgallery.com/knowledgecenter/artist_biography/jacques-laurent+agasse Global Gallery Bio & works]
- [http://www.jacques-laurent-agasse.org 23 works by Jacques-Laurent Agasse at www.Jacques-Laurent-Agasse.org] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221209151413/https://www.jacques-laurent-agasse.org/ |date=2022-12-09 }}
- [http://art.onilm.com/index.php?/category/7 Jacques-Laurent Agasse Paintings Gallery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120330165014/http://art.onilm.com/index.php?%2Fcategory%2F7 |date=2012-03-30 }} (Public Domain Paintings - www.art.onilm.com)
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Category:Swiss painters of animals
Category:Swiss landscape painters
Category:18th-century artists from the Republic of Geneva
Category:19th-century artists from the Republic of Geneva