Agasse was born in
Geneva, and received his first instruction in the public art
school of that city. Whilst still under twenty, he went to a
veterinary school
in Paris to study 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.
