Two Cocks Fighting over a Tufted Hen, ca. 1800

Jacques Barraband was born in Aubusson to a family that had been documented in the town since the 16th century and was baptised on 31 August 1768. His father, Jacques Barraband, a painter and maker of carpets, is mentioned as one of the five main users of the high warp tapestry technique. The young child undoubtedly attended one of the town’s two drawing schools from an early age, which accepted pupils as early as the age of seven. After graduating, Jacques Barraband created cartoons for his father before leaving for Paris. There, he attended classes at the Académie Royale de Peinture where he was the pupil of Joseph Laurent Malaine, a flower painter to Louis XVI at the Gobelins factory between 1787 and 1793. The following years were undoubtedly quite difficult. After the dismantling of the factories in 1793, the emigration of some families and the anxiety of the period, there were fewer clients. This reduction in activity led Barraband to diversify his skills: easel painting, tapestry cartoons, decorations for porcelain.

In 1706 thanks to his talents as a draughtsman, he was asked to illustrate Le Vaillant’s Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux d’Afrique. This was the beginning of a long and prolific association. One of the highlights of Barraband’s career is undoubtedly his collaboration on natural history publications prepared by Le Vaillant. Indeed, he supplied the majority of the illustrations for his Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets, Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de Paradis et des Rolliers suivie de celles des Toucans et des Barbus, Paris 1803 and Histoire Naturelle des Pomerops et des Guépiers… faisant suite à celle des Oiseaux de Paradis, Paris 1806.

This represents over three hundred drawings in gouache and watercolour. Some series were added to by Auguste Pelletier when Barraband could not provide the drawings, probably due to health problems. In addition to their undeniable beauty, these watercolours have a level of scientific precision that few ornithological artists have reached since then.

Among Barraband’s other projects connected with publications, Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle should be mentioned, and the organization of material collected by the Institut d’Egypte and published from 1800 in the Mémoires d’Egypte. Barraband’s skill led his colleague Gault de Saint-Germain to say after his death that he “could be counted among the number of those who have spread a taste for natural history that owes a large part of its progress to his association with painting.”
This activity was however only appreciated among a small circle of connoisseurs. It appears that the turning point in the artist’s career is the industrial exhibition organized in 1798 by the Minister of the Interior, François de Neufchâteau. There, Barraband exhibited the painting Pheasant and Parrots, as well as birds painted on porcelain for the Dilh et Guerhard factory. He began then to work more and more. Percier and Fontaine asked him to make paintings for the decorations they were creating, for example for the dining room of the Chateau de Saint-Cloud in 1804. In 1808, he painted the ceiling of a portable cabinet in mahogany for Joseph Bonaparte who was king of Spain at the time. He continued to supply cartoons for the Gobelins and the Savonnerie factories. He sent works, which were principally of birds, to the industrial exhibitions and the Salon between 1800 and 1806. On 25 January 1807, Jacques Barraband was appointed professor at the Ecole Spéciale des Arts et Dessin in Lyon. It is in this city that he died on 1 October 1809.

Jacques Barraband’s oil paintings are rare and therefore precious. The artist expressed himself more willingly on paper. This is how he essentially showed watercolours at the Salon from 1798. This was the case in 1804, the year he won a gold medal for the illustrations for the Description d’Egypte and the Histoires Naturelles by Levaillant. In 1806, he did not exhibit anything at the Salon. However, this is the year that L’Observateur at the Musée Napoléon commented on Two Cocks fighting over a Tufted Hen. The journal wrote that “this painting is comparable to the best that he does in this genre.” It considerd Barraband to be “the La Fontaine of painting” (“Barraband you charm our eyes…”). It is this magnificent painting in which Barraband “robs nature of its fine and always successful contours”, that we discover over two centuries later, perfectly conserved and completely fresh.

Barraband, in his early years, painted in oil, as a few paintings of the end of the 1780s show, especially those by the Aubusson tapestry maker Picon de Laubard. He began at a very young age to take an interest in tapestry in the family workshop and then painting on porcelain, as is shown by the magnificent Still Life with Pheasant and Parrots an oil on wood and porcelain by Dihl and Guerhard exist. Several paintings on wood or canvas, such as the one in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Quimper, are not signed, but are attributed to him. They are dated even less often.

Two Cocks fighting over a Tufted Hen bears Barraband’s signature, but not the date. Of course, this work predates 1806. In view of the exceptional technical skill, the rigour of the composition, the beauty and light of the colours, it can be considered to come from his period of full maturity that includes the end of the 1790s and the very beginning of the 19th century. After the appearance of the Histoires Naturelle des Perroquets Barraband devoted most of his talent from 1801 to gouache works and drawings for luxurious books. He was also a renowned teacher.

Barraband’s works were appreciated by Napoleon I and Joséphine de Beauharnais and also by private collectors. During his lifetime, he was a sought after and expensive painter.

In this work, Barraband embodies the summit of realistic ornithological art. His rendering of the feathers is exceptional while the cocks, in a restrained décor that is in tune with its time, seem to be moving. The colours vibrate, the eyes sparkle, and the blue sky bring serenity to a scene which effectively brings us back to Jean de La Fontaine.

Breeds of hens with their descriptions (or standards) appeared in France during the 1850s. Nevertheless, the tufted hen can be considered to be a gold laced Paduan hen with black borders, a race developed in Europe that is characterised by its voluminous comb. Its plumage is remarkable: each feather is ochre with a black border that contrasts with the general colour.

The two cocks can be considered ancestors of the Redcap, an English breed that has a very large Rose-type comb, which is very broad and includes small regular tips and a unique red colour with black glitter. The name Redcap comes from this immense red comb.