When in 1775 Vien was named director of the
French Academy in Rome, Sablet accompanied him there. In Rome he painted "''Les premiers pas de l'enfance"
("Primi passi"
, in Italian) (1789), which now belongs to the Pedriali Collection (Collezione Pedriali
), in the Museo Civico di San Domenico, of Forlì (Italy).)|left|300x300pxHis ambition was really to be a
history painter : he won second prize at the
Accademia di San Luca with "
Erminie et les bergers" (1777) and first prize at the
Parma competition with "
La mort de Pallas" (1778). He then painted an "
Allégorie de la République de Berne protégeant les Arts" (Allegory of the
Republic of Bern protecting the arts) and other mythological subjects such as "
Helen Saved by Venus from the Wrath of Aeneas", now both at
LACMA, and "
Mars and Minerva", without obtaining the necessary encouragement or commissions, he turned to
portraiture,
genre painting, and
landscape painting. Most of his genre scenes depicted the city's everyday life and customs of the
Campagna (countryside). In Rome, bustling street scenes featuring contemporaries in local attire became a successful genre in the 2nd half of the 18th century. Popular with tourists on their
Grand Tour, they were an important source of income for foreign artists such as Jacques Sablet and
Louis Ducros, both natives of the Swiss canton of
Vaud. The pair worked briefly together in 1781-1782 to produce plain and coloured etchings. During that period, they published a series of twelve engravings, entitled "
Scènes et costumes italiens" (
Italian Scenes and Costumes). The engravings and
aquatints, which excel at fine-grained detailing, were drawn by Sablet and engraved by Ducros to imitate
wash ("lavis" in French) In 1782 Ducros also executed a large composition in wash
together with Sablet: "Scène d'enterrement dans un cimetière"
(Burial scene in a cemetery''), in a landscape format, with numerous figures arranged in the manner of low-reliefs.) After breaking up with Ducros, he leaves to settle with
Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours near
Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1782 he entered the
Académie des Arcades de Rome (l’
Accademia dell’Arcadia) and began to make a name for himself: he was a friend of
Salomon Gessner (his son Conrad went to live with him in 1787 and shared his studio),
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, known as the
Goethe Tischbein,
Alexander Trippel (
Schaffhausen, 1744 - Rome, 1793),
Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein and
Carl Ludwig Hackert (
Prenzlau, 1740 - Morges, 1796), brother of
Jacob Philipp Hackert. such as the "
Portrait de famille avec le Colisée" and its counterpart, the "
Portrait de famille avec la Basilique de Maxence" (1791). [Jacques-Henri Sablet shared a studio with history painter
Hubert Drouais (?) [ impossible,
Hubert died in 1767 in Paris and, his son,
François-Hubert also died in Paris, 21 October 1775, neither lived in Rome; maybe, instead, it concerns the grand-son,
Jean-Germain, who was in Rome around that time...? ] ] == Exile and Return ==