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Dimensions: 42 by 30 1/4 in.

106.7 by 76.8cm

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Provenance: The Artist's Studio; sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, November 12-15, 1894 (for 18,500 francs)

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Notes: Charles Jacque moved from Paris to Barbizon with Jean-François Millet in 1849. Although Jacque arrived in the rural village as a printmaker and a sometime chronicler of peasant life, he developed into one of the principal animaliers of nineteenth-century France. During the 1860s, Jacque's international fame and financial success far exceeded that of Millet or Rousseau. His paintings of shepherdesses sheltering their flocks in the shadow of the great oaks of the Forest of Fontainebleau have become one of the defining images of Barbizon painting (even though most were created well after Jacque had moved from the tiny villlage) and one journalist wit dubbed him the "Raphael of the sheep barn."

This original version of Le Printemps (Springtime) was Jacque's first significant success as an animal painter. Created in 1859, perhaps with a debut at the Paris Salon in mind (although up to that date he had only exhibited etchings in the esteemed venue), the painting became well known through a prominent reproduction in Le Magasin Pittoresque the following year. Merging so many attractive motifs -- a quiet young shepherdess, a blossoming fruit tree, and a placid ewe suckling twin lambs -- was sure to attract attention to the painting; but it was Jacque's skill in rendering the sheep that was consistently applauded. Over the next twenty years, Jacque himself repeated the basic animal and figure group of Le Printemps in several variations, while various students and studio assistants also made replicas under his supervision.