Gustave Jacquet's first and only official teacher was William Adolphe Bouguereau, whose influence was evident in Jacquet's early work. The young artist debuted at the Salon of 1865 with an allegory, The Dream, a painting that one could easily mistake for a Bouguereau.

In the following years he developed his own unique style of genre painting based on the technical mastery he had acquired from his teacher. The works were small and evoked in great detail the elegant life of the l6th, l7th and l8th centuries. In his review of the 1878 Exposition Universelle, Edward Strahan said of Jacquet 's method:

"His painting, as full of sweetness as of science, is mounted equally on two epochs. He prepares observatio...