Maison de Paysan a Cricey

1843. Etching on chine-collé laid down to cream wove paper, 4 x 4 5/8 inches (100 x 121 mm), full margins. In good condition with minor mat tone, several unobtrusive spots of foxing in lower quadrant of image area. Tape residue at top right and left sheet corners, on the support matrix. Born in Paris in May of 1813, little is known about the early personal life of Charles-Émile Jacque. It is known however, that he began his artistic pursuits in a nontraditional way, having trained as an etcher before having trained as a painter. As a young man, Jacque apprenticed to a map maker in Paris, and after military service, where he served as a cartographer, he left for England, where he was employed as an engraver for La Charivari.  After two years in London, Jacque returned home to Paris, and made his Salon debut in 1833. Jacque continued to regularly contribute paintings and prints to the Salon every year until 1870. It was when great a cholera epidemic swept Paris in the middle of the 19th century that Jacque's career experienced a stage of significant growth. Jacque, who had been living and working in Paris at the time, decided to relocate his family from the city, which was completely besieged by illness, and flee for the pristine forest of Fontainebleau. Here he found himself surrounded by pastoral subject matter, and was deeply moved and inspired by the beauty and unidealized simplicity of the bucolic scenery of the woodlands, which once served as the unmapped preserve of kings and their royal hunting parties. Jacque settled in Barbizon, along the outskirts of Fontainebleau forest, along with his friend and colleague in the arts, Jean-François Millet. The two men where among the first generation of artists who settled in this region, and it is here that the Barbizon School has its origins. Jacque painted at Barbizon until 1854, finding his inspiration in the bucolic tableaus of shepherds and their flocks, pig pens, fowl, and farmers. He painted with tender realism and authentic appreciation. Not only did Jacque find artistic inspiration in Barbizon, he also was moved to become involved in land speculation and poultry breeding, a subject he became so aquatinted with that his enthusiasm spawned a book on the matter, Le Poulailler, monographie des poules indigences et exotiques, published in 1848. Jacque left Barbizon in 1854, and continued to paint in the environs around Paris until his death at the age of 81.