Jacques Sablet
In Rome he painted "Les premiers pas de l'enfance" ("Primi passi", in Italian) (1789), which now belongs to the Pedriali Collection (Collezione Pedriali), in the Museo Civico di San Domenico, of Forlì (Italy).His ambition was really to be a history painter : he won second prize at the Accademia di San Luca with "Erminie et les bergers" (1777) and first prize at the Parma competition with "La mort de Pallas" (1778).
He then painted an "Allégorie de la République de Berne protégeant les Arts" (Allegory of the Republic of Bern protecting the arts) and other mythological subjects such as "Helen Saved by Venus from the Wrath of Aeneas", now both at LACMA, and "Mars and Minerva", without obtaining the necessary encouragement or commissions,[1] facing stiff competition from the likes of Jacques-Louis David and Pierre Peyron, among others, and lacking solid academic training.
Popular with tourists on their Grand Tour, they were an important source of income for foreign artists such as Jacques Sablet and Louis Ducros, both natives of the Swiss canton of Vaud.
[6] In 1782 Ducros also executed a large composition in wash together with Sablet: "Scène d'enterrement dans un cimetière" (Burial scene in a cemetery), in a landscape format, with numerous figures arranged in the manner of low-reliefs.
In 1782 he entered the Académie des Arcades de Rome (l’Accademia dell’Arcadia) and began to make a name for himself: he was a friend of Salomon Gessner (his son Conrad went to live with him in 1787 and shared his studio), Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, known as the Goethe Tischbein, Alexander Trippel (Schaffhausen,1744 - Rome, 1793), Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein and Carl Ludwig Hackert[8] (Prenzlau, 1740 - Morges, 1796), brother of Jacob Philipp Hackert.
[7] Staying at the Louvre, he exhibited regularly at the Salon: Italian scenes and landscapes seduced critics and great collectors such as François Cacault, Cardinal Fesch, Lucien Bonaparte.
He stood apart from the rest, and had to go abroad for his training and career: in Paris, he could not follow the academic curriculum, being a Protestant; in Rome, he had to find his admirers among the foreigners passing through.
Source:[1] A painter of undoubted originality, his body of work is little known apart from family portraits in which fragile silhouettes stand out against large, pure skies, and Italian scenes with warm colours and sharp contrasts, successful themes of Giandomenico Tiepolo or Goya, such as the "Colin-maillard"[11] (1791), a masterpiece of the genre.
The genre scenes, not gallant but «bene moratae», so highly esteemed by contemporaries, are mostly lost, were it not for "Les premiers pas de l'enfance" (1789), already mentioned, now in the Collezione Pedriali.
Jacques Sablet studies feelings in their subtlety, evokes brightly coloured Italian costumes, plays with light through a portico or is seduced by the Roman countryside on a summer evening.
Emulating Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jacques Sablet has found the right and true tone, cultivated with fine and lively touches, and without false effects, the art of charming.
