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PROPERTY OF AN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION CHARLES EMILE JACQUE FRENCH, 1813-1894 TROUPEAU DE VACHES À L'ABREUVOIR

signed Ch. Jacque (lower left)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Artist's studio; sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, November 12-15, 1894, no. 2
Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam, 1985
Bernheimer Gallery, London and Munich, 1993
Sale, Christie's, New York, May 25, 1995, no. 222, illustrated
EXHIBITED

Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition de Tableaux, Dessins et Gravures par Ch. Jacque, 1891, no. 25
Paris, Salon, 1892, no. 907
Osaka, National Museum of Art, The Barbizon School in Dutch Collections, 1987, no. 43, illustrated
Munich and London, Bernheimer Gallery, Barbizon: 19th Century French Paintings from a European Private Collection, 1993, no. 34
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Pierre Olivier Fanica, Charles Jacque, 1813-1894, Graveur original et peintre animalier, Montigny-sur-Loing, 1995, p. 203, illustrated

CATALOGUE NOTE

Charles Jacque painted Troupeau de Vaches à l'Abreuvoir about 1890, during the last decade of his life, as he introduced a new monumentality and an exceptional boldness of paint handling to the themes that had shaped his art for half a century. Returning to the Salon exhibitions after a twenty year absence, Jacque presented Troupeau de Vaches à l'Abreuvoir and the comparabaly large Berger et son Troupeau (Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia) to confirm his legacy as one of the century's foremost animal painters.

Charles Jacque had been among the first artists to establish a permanent home in Barbizon, moving there from Paris with Jean-François Millet in 1849. Following his first success as an etcher and illustrator, Jacque turned increasingly to painting. By the early 1860s he enjoyed considerable fame and a growing international clientele as an animal painter. Jacque was particularly known for paintings of sheep and their shepherds along the forest edge and for his colorful scenes of the exotic chickens he raised himself. When one journalistic wit dubbed Jacque the 'Raphael of the sheepbarn' the nickname was a recognition of both the occasional sentimentality of Jacque's imagery and the careful, precise style in which his early animal paintings were rendered.

Jacque lived twenty years longer than most of his Barbizon contemporaries and watched the rural subjects they had pioneered be taken up by a wide field of younger artists more familiar with the avenues of Paris than the countryside. During the 1870s and 1880s, Jacque's commercial success afforded him the luxury of ignoring the competition and criticism of Salon exhibition. In 1888, however, he made a dramatic return to the Salon with an immense painting of life-size sheep that appear to move out over the frame edge. Albert Wolff, the influential critic for Le Figaro, heralded Jacque's return to the Salon with accolades. In 1891, Jacque collaborated with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel on a major one-man exhibition of his work. Troupeau de Vaches à l'Abreuvoir was included in the Durand-Ruel show and was featured as Jacque's Salon entry of 1892. With the scale of a major history painting and using heavily textured, strong, forceful touches of paint, Jacque has perfectly captured the individual characteristics, poses, movements and breeds of the cows, as well as evoking the heat of a summer day. The anonymous shepherdess guides her herd to the cool refreshment of a shaded pool. Troupeau de Vaches à l'Abreuvoir was Jacque's final challenge to both the academic animal painters and the growing Impressionist movement.

This catalogue entry was written by Alexandra Murphy.

We are grateful to Monsieur Jean-Pierre Chambon for kindly confirming the authenticity of this work which he will include in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné.