JACQUIÉS, dit Leblond, JEAN, sculptor and painter, b. 1688 in the parish of Sainte-Catherine in Brussels; son of Luc Jacquiés and Barbe Segris (Seygris); d. after 1724.

He arrived in Canada about 1712, and on 24 Nov. 1715 married Catherine Guillemote at Montreal; they had at least three children.

Jacquiés, dit Leblond, worked especially in the region of Trois-Rivières. On 28 June 1716 he undertook to make the altar of the Ursuline church there* the contract bears the signature of Father Joseph Denys, the parish priest of Trois-Rivières at that time. On 23 Feb. 1721 the parish priest of Saint-François-du-Lac, Jean-Baptiste Dugast, ordered from him a tabernacle similar “to the one which he, Leblond, previously made for the Recollet fathers in that town [Trois-Rivières] and which is now on the high altar of their church.” In addition to the necessary wood, Jacquiés received 350 livres in money and 20 pounds of tobacco.

Of his work as a sculptor there remain only two bas-reliefs intended for the first church of Yamachiche, a madonna, and fragments of the tabernacle of Saint-François-du-Lac. Only two pictures permit us to form an idea of his talents as a painter: Marie Madeleine repentante and Madone tenant son enfant.

The two extant bas-reliefs represent St Joseph and St Simon. In these one notices a certain stiffness and an absence of artifice, which recall in a way the ingenuousness of the old masters of the Middle Ages. The statue of the Virgin is more elaborate without being fussy. The artist’s Flemish ancestry is more evident in the two paintings. These also display a certain rigidity in composition, but it is pleasantly softened by the complicated drapery and the well-arranged colours.

We lose all trace of Jacquiés after 1724, the year in which one of his children was baptized. We know however that his wife returned to Montreal and died there in 1734.

Maurice Carrier