Charles Jacque was among the first generation of painters to leave the city for the forest of Fontainebleau, where helped to establish the Barbizon School. Also a founding and influential member of the "Men of 1830" (also called l'Ecole francaise du paysage), a loose movement of artists who, spurred on by the Revolution of 1830, sought out new directions in landscape painting. His strong, realistic, yet sensitive depictions of shepherds and their flocks form one of the most cohesive and important bodies of work produced by the movement.

Born in 1813 in Paris, Jacque began his training in etching rather than painting, as an apprentice to a map engraver. In this area, Jacque was unsurpassed among his colleagues in the Barbi...