Jacques Sablet was a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 painter. Son of a decorator and gilder from Lausanne

Lausanne

Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

, he studied with his father before moving to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1772; there he worked with Joseph-Marie Vien

Joseph-Marie Vien

Joseph-Marie Vien , French painter, was born at Montpellier. He was the last holder of the post of Premier peintre du Roi, serving from 1789 to 1791....

 for three years. When in 1775 Vien was named director of the French Academy in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, Sablet accompanied him there. His ambition was to be a history painter

History painting

History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...

, but facing competition from Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...

 and Pierre Peyron, among others, and lacking solid academic training, he could win no commissions. Instead he turned to portrait

Portrait

thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...

ure , genre painting

Genre painting

Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...

, and landscape painting. Most of his genre scenes depicted the city's everyday life and customs of the Campagna

Campagna

Campagna is a small town and comune of the province of Salerno, in the Campania region of Southern Italy.-History:The town, located in a mountainous district, gradually lost importance in the 20th century...

. Sablet shared a studio with history painter Hubert Drouais

Hubert Drouais

Hubert Drouais , was a French painter, portraitist and miniaturist.Drouais was born in Pont-Audemer in Normandy, the son of Anne Talon and the painter Jean Drouais. Hubert followed in his father’s footsteps and received his first lessons from him before leaving for Rouen to further his skills...

 and was friends with Simon Denis

Simon Denis

Simon-Joseph-Alexandre-Clément Denis was a Belgian painter active primarily in Italy.A native of Antwerp, Denis first studied in that city with landscape and animal painter H.-J. Antonissen. The work of Balthasar Ommeganck also influenced his style. He moved to Paris in the 1780s, and soon...

. He fled to Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 in 1793 with the rise of anti-French sentiment in the Papal States

Papal States

The Papal State, State of the Church, or Pontifical States were among the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...

, but perhaps because of the competition he would face there from Louis Gauffier

Louis Gauffier

Louis Gauffier was a French painter. Born in Poitiers, he studied in Paris with history painter Hugues Taraval before entering the Prix de Rome competition; this he won in 1784, and apart from a brief return to Paris in 1789 he would remain in Italy for the remainder of his life...

 he soon returned to Paris. He accompanied Lucien Bonaparte

Lucien Bonaparte

Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Français, 1st Prince of Canino and Musignano , born Luciano Buonaparte, was the third surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and his wife Letizia Ramolino....

 when the latter was named ambassador

Ambassador

An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....

 to Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

in 1800, serving as an adviser on his art collection.