Born in Voreppe, Isère, into a farming family, Jean Alexis Achard was self-taught and started his career as a clerk for a lawyer. He began his apprenticeship by copying paintings at the Museum of Grenoble. He then attended the free municipal school of Grenoble, and met the Lyon school painters who gave him his first tutelage. Isidore Dagnan was his teacher from 1824 to 1830. At 27, he moved to Paris and copied the Dutch masters at the Louvre. He made an expedition organized by the St. Simonians and thus lived in Egypt between 1835 and 1837 with his friend Victor Sappey. He bought landscapes and genre scenes when he came back to France. Thus, he exhibited at the Salon in 1838, Vue prise aux environs du Caire, and then regularly thereafter, as in 1843 with Vue de la vallée de Grenoble. In 1846, he attended the Barbizon School and became friends with the painters Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny and Narcisse Virgilio Díaz, on whom he had a certain influence and who taught him to paint in the pattern of the Paris region. He also stayed in Auvers-sur-Oise for a while. Between 1858 and 1859, he lived in Honfleur and lived in the Saint-Siméon farm, with Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet. He became sick and suffered thru serious financial difficulties, and finally died in 1870 in Grenoble. He is buried at Saint Roch Cemetery.
Works
Paintings
Achard is known for his paintings of Dauphiné landscapes, which earned him the title of "master of the landscape in Dauphiné". He is the creator of the École dauphinoise, whose notable members were Laurent Guétal, Ernest Victor Hareux, Charles Bertier and a few others. Several works by Achard are kept at the Museum of Grenoble, including Paysage, vue de Saint-Egrève and La chaumière. His other works can be seen in Paris at the Louvre, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry, the Musée du Château de Fontainebleau.
Printings
Achard was also a renowned printer, with over sixty etchings. The first printings were created after his paintings, and cover major horizons. Thereafter, he focused on more local views of woodlands.
Pupils
was his pupil when he was in Paris. But after his comeback in Grenoble, his influence was considerable, especially on Laurent Guétal, Charles Bertier and Édouard Brun, who eagerly followed his advice. He was a teacher and an adviser for the generation of young Dauphiné painters in Proveysieux, including Théodore Ravanat, Jacques Gay, Henri Blanc-Fontaine.
Legacy
Achard was widely represented in his friends and students' works, including :
