Jacques-Laurent Agasse

The gentleman shown in the top hat is Edward Cross, operator of the menagerie at Exeter Exchange and then Royal Surrey Gardens. Agasse painted many other animals from his collection. Jacques-Laurent Agasse (April 24, 1767 – December 27, 1849) was an animal and landscape painter from Switzerland. Jacques-Laurent Agasse was born at Geneva, Agasse studied in the public art school of that city. Before he turned twenty he went to Paris to study in veterinary school to make himself fully acquainted with the anatomy of horses and other animals. He seems to have subsequently returned to Switzerland. The Tübinger Morgenblatt (1808, p. 876) says that "Agasse, the celebrated animal painter, now in England, owed his fortune to an accident. About eight years ago, he being then in Switzerland, a rich Englishman (George Pitt, later Lord Rivers) asked him to paint his favourite dog (greyhound) which had died. The Englishman was so pleased with his work that he took the painter to England with him." Nagler says that he was one of the most celebrated animal painters at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. In Johann Georg Meusel's Neue Miscellaneen (viii. 1052 et seq.), he compares Agasse and Wouwermans, wholly in favour of the former. In that partial article much is said of his extreme devotion to art, of his marvelous knowledge of anatomy, of his special fondness for the English racehorses, and his excellence in depicting them. In the catalogues his name is given as J.L. Agasse or Agassé. The writer of the panegyric already quoted says, however, that he did not work for money, but that he was urged forward by the resistless force of natural genius.

The recorded working language is French. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are landscape. Places of work recorded in the authority are Geneva, Paris and London. Works named in the authority record are The Playground. Work by Jacques-Laurent Agasse is recorded in the collections of Tate, Kunst Museum Winterthur | Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Yale Center for British Art, Fitzwilliam Museum and Museum of Art and History Geneva.

• Illustration — Landing at Westminster Bridge, 1818, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur • Illustration — Male Quagga, early 1800s, Royal College of Surgeons • Illustration — Flower Seller, 1822, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur • Illustration — The Last Stage on the Portsmouth Road, 1815, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur • Illustration — White Horse in Pasture, 1806–1807, oil on canvas, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur • Illustration — Emma Powles • Illustration — The Wellesley Grey Arabian Led through the Desert • Illustration — Edinburgh and London Royal Mail • Illustration — Edward Cross (1774–1854), zoo proprietor. • Illustration — The playground