Jacques-Laurent Agasse (Geneva 1767-1849 London)

Jacques-Laurent Agasse was born into an affluent and politically influential Huguenot family in Switzerland. He began his artistic training in Geneva, before moving to Paris, where he joined the studio of the celebrated Neoclassical painter, Jacques-Louis David. He first visited England around 1790, at the invitation of the Hon. George Pitt, 1st Baron Rivers (?1722–1803), however, it was not until 1800 that he moved there permanently, with the intention of establishing himself as a sporting artist.

In England, he met with considerable success, thanks in part to Lord Rivers’ generous introductions and commissions. Agasse painted a series of exquisite animal pictures for Lord Rivers, including the superb The Stud Farm at Stratfield Saye, in 1807 (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection). It was around this time, circa 1806-1807, that Agasse completed the present painting. Like the works in the Lord Rivers series, it is a masterpiece of animal portraiture. Agasse successfully combines extraordinary sensitivity and expression with an anatomical exactitude. The artist went to great lengths, studying dissection and veterinary science in an effort to correlate the underlying anatomy of the horse with its outward appearance.

This grey hunter bears strong similarities - particularly in the stance of the horse - to Agasse's A Little Bay Stallion from Lord Heathfield’s Stud, of 1805, formerly in the Paul Mellon Collection, and Grey Horse in a Meadow, formerly in the Oskar Reinhart collection, which dates to the same period and formed part of the series of animal pictures painted for Lord Rivers (see J. Egerton, British sporting and animal drawings, c.1500-1850: a catalogue, London, 1978, no. 187 and R. Loche and C. Sanger, Jacques-Laurent Agasse, 1767-1849, exhibition catalogue, Geneva, 1988, p. 90. no. 25, respectively).