CHARLES EMILE JACQUE BIOGRAPHY

Born in Paris on the 23rd of May, 1813, Charles Jacque was a founding and leading member of the "Men of 1830." He helped to redefine landscape painting and pave the way for a new understanding of nature and art. In addition to his legacy as one of the nineteenth century's foremost animal painters, Jacque is remembered for his etchings and for his work as an activist, a business man, and as a naturalist.

Emulating George Michel (1763-1843), whose dramatic landscapes would remain a powerful source of inspiration to Jacque, his early paintings depict windmills at Montmartre. He soon developed his own style though and became known for his realist paintings of animals in the country. His realistic yet sensitive depiction of shepherds and their flocks in the country became his hallmark and remains one of the most important bodies of work produced by Realism.

The spring of 1849 brought an outbreak of cholera in Paris. To avoid the illness, Jacque and his friend and fellow artist Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) moved their families onto adjoining properties in the artist's colony of Barbizon, just southeast of Paris on the edge of the Forest of Fontainbleau. Their move to Barbizon signaled an embrace of rural life even as the industrial revolution swirled around them. Their rejection of dynamic urban life in favour of the animalier and landscape traditions combined with their plein air techniques and realist tendencies positioned them on the avant-garde of painting.

Jacque outlived most of the other Barbizon artists. The aging Jacque called himself "the last of the Romantics." Jacque died on the 7th of May 1894, just shy of his 81st birthday.

View artwork by Charles Emile Jacque