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Jacques-Laurent Agasse (March 24, 1767 - December
27, 1849) was an animal and landscape painter.

He was born at Geneva, and received his first
instruction in the public art school of that city.
Whilst still under twenty he went to Paris, in
order that there, in the veterinary school, he
might make himself fully acquainted with the
anatomy of the horse 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 asked him to paint his favourite
dog 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 Meusel's
Neue Miscellaneen (viii. 1052 et seq.), a
comparison is instituted between Agasse and
Wouvermans, wholly in favour of the former. In
that partial article much is said of his extreme
devotion to art, of his marvellous knowledge of
anatomy, of his special fondness for the English
racehorses, and his excellence in depicting them.
He appears first in the Academy catalogues in 1801
as the exhibitor of the 'Portrait of a Horse', and
continued to exhibit more or less until 1845
(contradicting Nagler's statement that he died
"about" 1806). In the catalogues his name is given
as J.L. Agasse or Agassé. The number of times
Agassé changed his address confirms Redgrave's
assertion that "he lived poor and died poor". The
writer of the panegyric already quoted says,
however, that it was not for bread or for gain
that he laboured, but that he was urged forward by
the resistless force of natural genius.

==Sources==

Nagler, Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, 1872, gives
an account inter alia of his engraved works;
Füssli, Neue Zusätze zu dem allgemeinen
Künstler-Lexicon; Tübinger Morgenblatt, 1808, p.
876; Meusel, Neue Miscellaneen, viii. 1052;
Fiorillo, Geschichte der Mahlerey, v. 841, speaks
of Agasse and Charles Ansell as the most
celebrated English animal painters; Redgrave's
Dictionary.