Jacques Fouquier

Biography

Jacques Fouquier was born at Antwerp around 1580, where he received some instruction from Jodocus De Momper, and afterwards studied under Jan Brueghel. He was registered in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1614. He adopted a style of landscape painting very superior to that of either of his masters, and in this branch of art arrived at an excellence that induced Rubens occasionally to employ him to paint the backgrounds of his pictures. Under this master he gained so high a reputation that the Elector Palatine employed him at his court when still young.

In 1616-1619 he worked in Heidelberg, and in 1620 he traveled to Italy, where he visited Rome and Venice, where he greatly improved his style by studying the works of Titian, whose fine landscapes were the particular objects of his admiration. In 1621 he went to Paris, where he worked as a court painter for Louis XIII there and in other French locations. His pictures were so much admired by that monarch that he conferred on him the honour of knighthood, which mark of distinction is said by D'Argenville to have rendered him so vain and ridiculous, that he afterwards never painted without his sword by his side.

Legend has it that he became so proud and overbearing that his insolence to Nicolas Poussin, who was employed by the king at the same time in the Louvre, caused Poussin to leave Paris and reside at Rome for the remainder of his life.

Fouquier was a distinguished painter of landscapes. His pencil is free and firm, and his colour, both in oil and in fresco, is clear and fresh, though occasionally cold, and too green. The figures with which he embellished his landscapes are correctly drawn, and touched with great spirit. He fell into disgrace, and died in Paris, in poverty, in 1659. Landscape paintings of Fouquier are, amongst others, part of the collections of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux.

His pupils were Philippe de Champaigne, Matthieu van Plattenberg, and Etienne Rendu.