Jacques Raymond Brascassat

Private Collection, France

Paris, Salon, 1845, no. 210
Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1855, no. 2621

Charles Marionneau, Brascassat, Sa Vie Et Son Oeuvre, Paris, 1872, no. 90, pp. 296-297

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has been recently restored and should be hung as is. The canvas has been lined using glue as an adhesive. The paint layer is stable and still well textured. The paint layer has been cleaned and there are no structural damages. Retouches have been applied in a few places in the darkest colors in some of the animals and elsewhere to slightly reduce some cracking, which was felt to be too noticeable. There is a little bit of thinness in the darker colors of the upper tree trunk on the left which has been retouched and there is a spot or two in the sky above the bull on the right. This picture is in lovely condition and should be hung as is.
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Jacques-Raymond Brascassat was born in Bordeaux on August 30, 1804. He began his artistic career there at the age of 14 with the landscape painter Théodore Richard and showed an early interest in drawing animals.  By 1825 he was studying under Louis Hersent at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was sent to Italy the following year, despite coming only second in the Prix de Rome with Hunt of Meleager (Bordeaux, Musée de Beaux-Arts).  In Rome, Brascassat met Théodore-Caruelle d'Aligny, with whom he spent most of his first year sketching in the surrounding countryside.  The history paintings he sent back to Paris, however, met with little success.  Returning to Paris in 1830, he rejoined d'Aligny at Barbizon in 1831 and exhibited six landscapes of the area at the Paris Salon.

At the Salon of 1831 Brascassat received a first prize for his landscapes, while a special mention was made of his animal pieces, a genre that he subsequently made his own, abandoning history painting completely.  By 1837 when he exhibited Bulls Fighting (Nantes, Musée de Beaux-Arts) at the Salon his reputation as an animal painter was firmly established.  He last exhibited at the Salon of 1845, mainly due to failing health, despite his reception as an Academician the following year.  Brascassat continued to produce landscapes, drawing when he was no longer able to paint, until his death in Paris on February 28, 1867.

The present work, one of his Salon entries for 1845 and created at the height of  Brascassat's artistic skill and popularity, depicts two bulls defending a cow from attacking wolves.  The masterful and dramatic setting reveals the artist's skill as a landscape painter.