Rating and value of paintings by Jacques Fouquier

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Rating and value of the artist

Popular during his lifetime and court painter to Louis XIII, Jacques Fouquier (or Fouquières) made his mark on the art market as early as the 17th century. Today, the artist's quotation is high and stable, despite his low presence on the market.

Highly prized by lovers of landscape painting, some of his works can fetch thousands of euros at auction.

His painting City in winter, with frozen river and figures herding was sold for over €163,700.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The style and technique of Jacques Fouquier  

Jacques Fouquier or Jacques Fouquières (1580/91 - 1659) was a specialist in Flemish Baroque landscape. His works show a broad perspective, often a vast, animated nature and integrated human figuration.

He is heir to the tradition of " word-landscapes " (northern panoramic landscapes), with distant mountains, vast skies, rivers, groves and expansive vistas dominating the smaller figures. Around 1622, he made a transition to a more focal composition, with trees in the foreground, a reduction in panoramic depth and a more unified space and serene atmosphere.

His chromatic palette is controlled, with deep greens, ochres, browns for foliage and ground, and blues - grays for background and atmosphere. The contrast between light and shadowed areas is quite subtle.

Human figures are present but secondary : unlike some contemporaries who gave great prominence to figures, with Fouquier nature remains the protagonist. The support and medium used remain mainly oil on panel and canvas, with the occasional tempera technique or pigment dilution reminiscent of the miniaturists.

The artist works with layers, superimposing them to modulate light and dark areas in order to create depth and atmosphere. His compositions are structured, with a use of successive planes (foreground, middle ground, background), and an evolution towards a reduction in stratification and a more homogeneous space.

Details are meticulous and despite the scale of the landscapes foliage, distant architecture and figures are rendered with precision. Ex-cities or castles are visible from a distance.

The artist pays particular attention to the quality of the air, light and skies are treated with perceptible distance effects, influenced by the classical landscape.

The life of Jacques Fouquier  

Jacques Fouquier or Jacques Fouquières (1580/91 - 1659) was a Flemish painter born in Antwerp (Belgium). His date of birth is uncertain, since records are not consistent. On January 5, 1604, he inscribed on a drawing " aetatis suae 13 ", which however allows us to roughly date his birth.

In 1614, he is registered as a master in the Guilde de Saint-Luc d'Anvers under the name " Jacques Foucque ". Around 1616-1619, we find traces of his activity in Heidelberg, Germany, in the service of Elector Palatine Frederick V, for the decorative program of " l'Englischer Bau " at Heidelberg Castle.

From 1619 to 1621, he returned to Brussels for a period, with a possible stay in Italy around 1620. In 1621 (at the latest), he moved to Paris, where he became court painter to Louis XIII. On July 15, 1626, he received a royal commission to paint landscape views for the Grande Galerie in the Louvre Palace. The same year, his ennoblement was reported.

He traveled to France to execute royal commissions : in 1626 to Toulon, in 1627 to Aix-en-Provence, and in 1629 to Marseille and Toulon.

It is documented that in 1644, he was living in Paris with other Flemish artists. He died in France between late 1655 and early 1656, or 1659 according to some sources. His after-death inventory (January 4, 1656) indicates that he had debts and few possessions, so we can assume that he died in some precarious state.

His notable pupils included Philippe de Champaigne, Matthieu van Plattenberg and Étienne Redu. He is informally referred to as " Flemish Titian " due to his high reputation at the time. Many of his large-scale decorative works for the Louvre palace or the Tuileries were lost, notably when the palace burned down in 1871.

He collaborated with and was esteemed by other masters of the time, indicating an independent European artistic network.

Focus on Panoramic view of Avignon, Jacques Fouquier

This work features a monumental tree in the foreground, dominating the entire scene. To the right, it depicts an inn and a few characters clearly visible in space. In the background, the city of Avignon stands out in a more diffuse landscape, with its illuminated roofs.

The work illustrates a transition for Fouquier. The interplay of planes (foreground, middleground, background) is still visible, but the background is treated with a more homogenous atmosphere, an indication of the transition to a less stratified landscape.

The palette favors blue-greens for the countryside, a bright red for a woman's dress in the center-right, and a golden light on the city of Avignon, and creates a contrast between urban brightness and rural quietude. Unlike some landscapes where the artist delegates the figures, here Fouquier seems to paint the figures alone.

They are precisely integrated into the setting, but remain secondary to the tree and landscape. His pictorial technique uses oil on panel, with dense layers of paint applied for the foreground, and a concern for detail (foliage, architecture), as well as a progression towards broader, atmospheric strokes at the back.

The treatment of foliage remains schematic rather than naturalistic, marking a formal rigor. The giant tree is conceived as a visual pivot, evoking an almost majestic natural presence. The cityscape of Avignon evokes human order in nature, and the union of the two suggests the coexistence of man and nature, a theme dear to Flemish Baroque landscape.

The work is part of the royal decorative program that Fouquier would lead for Louis XIII, with the valorization of nature and French royalty, which can be read in this panoramic view of an emblematic French city.

This work illustrates an evolution in Fouquier's work, namely the gradual abandonment of vast, open " word-landscapes " in favor of more contemplative, centered compositions, with a powerful foreground.

It allows us to compare his approach with that of contemporaries, for example Claude Lorrain or Nicolas Poussin, who for their part favored a classical antecedent and a smoother atmospheric depth. Fouquier still retains the Nordic robustness of the landscape while slipping into 17th-century French art.

The highly visible presence of the tree recalls solutions seen in Gillis van Coninxloo or other Flemish painters, with the tree motif as a central structure, which becomes a motif of visual interiority rather than mere decorative filler.

His signature

Not all of Jacques Fouquier's works are signed.

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