French painter and printmaker. He was a protégé of Gabriel-Christophe Allegrain and was taught by Joseph-Marie Vien. His own preference was for genre painting in the Flemish style. In 1781 he was approved (agréé) as a member of the Académie Royale, Paris, on the basis of several works to be exhibited at that year’s Salon; among these, the Charitable Gentleman (Paris, Gal. Cailleux) is a moralistic scene clearly inspired by Jean-Baptiste Greuze but using the technique of Isaack van Ostade. The pictures Debucourt exhibited at the Salons of 1783 and 1785 continued to draw their inspiration from Flemish art, then very popular in Paris, while remaining faithful to the realities of French peasant life. One of these works, The King’s Act of Charity and Humanity (untraced; engraved in 1787 by Laurent Guyot), was accepted for exhibition in 1785 only after Debucourt had, by royal command, changed the title and made Louis XVI less easy to recognize.

Debucourt was principally known, however, as an engraver. In 1782, he reproduced in etching and dry point one of his own paintings of 1781, The Judge or the Broken Pitcher (Fenaille, nos 1 and 2). Shortly afterwards he took up colour printing; trained by his friend Guyot, by 1785 he was able to publish his first prints, the Lovers Revealed (F4) and its pendant, the Lovers Pursued (F5), both printed from four plates but in rather coarse colours. By 1786 he had perfected the technique in the Bride’s Minuet (F8), engraved on five plates and forming a pendant to the Village Wedding, engraved by Charles-Melchior Descourtis after Nicolas-Antoine Taunay.

The following year Debucourt published one of his most famous prints, Walk in the Gallery of the Palais-Royal (F11), inspired by Thomas Rowlandson’s Vauxhall Gardens. Here Debucourt caricatured in a comic vein the crowd in one of the busiest places in Paris. He returned to the same subject in 1792 in his engraving and aquatint Public Promenade (F33; for illustration see GOUACHE MANNER). These two large colour prints were apparently his greatest successes.

From 1785 to 1800 Debucourt created 64 engraved works, all after his own paintings in oil, gouache and watercolour: they include several portraits, such as those of Louis XVI (1789; F19) and Marie-Joseph, Marquis de La Fayette (1790; F23), as well as several small patriotic scenes, such as Almanach National (1791; F26). Most numerous were genre scenes; some, such as the Happy Family (1796; F61), are in a tender vein, but most are on themes of gallantry, such as the Rose in Danger (1791; F27). He experimented widely with colour-printing techniques, including intaglio engraving, mezzotint, soft-ground etching and aquatint. For the most part the colour was printed using several plates, but in a few cases a single plate was coloured à la poupée. He later took up crayon manner and lithography. This many-sided production, the quality of which was uneven, became even more intensive after 1800; by the end of his life Debucourt had engraved 494 plates, chiefly reproductions of other artists’ work. He made prints after the paintings of Carle Vernet, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Nicolas-Toussaint Charles and Martin Drolling. When engraving his own works, he exploited in particular his caricature style, as in The Visits (1800; F65) and its pendant, The Orange, or a Modern Judgement of Paris (F66). At about the same time Debucourt began to paint again, exhibiting his works, chiefly peasant scenes, at the Salons of 1810, 1814, 1817 and 1824. He died poor, however, as the dependant of his nephew and pupil Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet, who left interesting accounts of the artist.