Jacques Laurent Agasse (1767 – 1849)

Jacques Laurent Agasse (1767 – 1849)  Swiss Animal and Landscape Painter.

Jacques Laurent Agasse born at Geneva, 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 asked him to paint his favourite dog 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 Meusel’s Neue Miscellaneen (viii. 1052 et seq.), he compares Agasse and Wouvermans, 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 was extremely devoted to art, and marvelously knowledgeable of anatomy. He was known 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 Jacques Laurent 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.

In spite of this fame he lived poor and died poor. It was not for bread or for gain that he labored, but that he was urged forward by the resistless force and passion. Probably due to his difficult personality, the success that Agasse acquired in England had diminished by his death in 1849.