Jacques Laurent Agasse

Private collection, Switzerland;

Thereafter acquired by the present owner.

Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Jacques-Laurent Agasse 1767-1849, exhibition catalogue, Geneva 1988, p. 62, under cat. no. 11.

The Swiss-born artist Jacques Laurent Agasse spent his early career in Paris, where he trained in Jacques-Louis David’s studio and honed his animalier skills by attending courses at the Parisian Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. In 1789, Agasse returned to Geneva where he focused his talents on animal paintings, characterized by a high degree of refinement, anatomical precision, and psychological presence. His acutely-observed and highly-refined depictions of horses and hounds garnered the admiration of George Pitt, 2nd Lord Rivers, who in 1800 invited the artist to England where he established himself as a successful sporting painter. 

A fascinating document of Agasse’s artistic process, this oil sketch of various hunting dogs contains preparatory studies for at least three different paintings spanning his early career in Geneva and London: Departure for the Hunt, Portrait of Frédéric-Samuel Audéoud-Fazy, and Portrait of a Mastiff.

The brown-and-white-spotted pointer standing attentively at upper left in the present work features in Agasse's Portrait Frédéric-Samuel Audéoud-Fazy.¹ Painted circa 1796-1800 shortly before the artist’s departure for England, this portrait depicts the artist’s lifelong friend alongside his horse and loyal hound on the grounds of Audéoud’s Plainpalais estate near Geneva. Rendered with particularly striking psychological depth/intensity, the mastiff that dominates the present oil sketch at upper right is the sole subject of another work, signed and dated 1797, and probably appears in a larger as-yet unidentified oil composition by the artist.² Agasse must have taken this sketch-filled canvas with him to England; the pack of hunting dogs that occupy the lower register are a study for the hounds in Departure for the Hunt, painted in 1803 in Hertfordshire, near London.³ 

¹ Geneva, Musée d'art et d'histoire, inv. no. 1913-0068.

² Private collection; sold Geneva, Koller, 6 December 2013, lot 3019.

³ Geneva, Musée d'art et d'histoire, inv. no. 1913-0066.