Troyon, Constant
TROYON, CONSTANT (1810-1865), French painter, was born on the 28th of August 1810 at Sevres, near Paris, where his father was connected with the famous manufactory of china. Troyon was an animal painter of the first rank, and was closely associated with the artists who painted around Barbizon. The technical qualities of his methods of painting are most masterly; his drawing is excellent, and his composition always interesting. It was only comparatively late in life that Troyon found his metier, but when he realized his power of painting animals he produced a fairly large number of good pictures in a few years. Troyon entered the ateliers very young as a decorator, and until he was twenty he laboured assiduously at the minute details of porcelain ornamentation ; and this kind of work he mastered so thoroughly that it was many years before he overcame its limitations. By the time he reached twenty-one he was travelling the country as an artist, and painting landscapes so long as his finances lasted. Then when pressed for money he made friends with the first china manufacturer he met and worked steadily at his old business of decorator until he had accumulated enough funds to permit him to start again on his wanderings.
Troyon was a favourite with Roqueplan, an artist of distinction eight years his senior, and he became one of his pupils after receiving certain tuition from a painter, now quite unknown, named Riocreux. Roqueplan introduced Troyon to Rousseau, Jules Dupre, and the other Barbizon painters, and in his pictures between 1840 and 1847 he seemed to endeavour to follow in their footsteps. But as a landscapist Troyon would never have been recognized as a thorough master, although his work of the period is marked with much sincerity and met with a certain success. It may be pointed out, however, that in one or two pure landscapes of the end of his life he achieved qualities of the highest artistic kind; but this was after lengthy experience as a cattle painter, by which his talents had become thoroughly developed.
In 1846 Troyon went to the Netherlands, and at the Hague saw Paul Potter's famous " Young Bull." From the studies he made of this picture, of Cuyp's sunny landscapes, and brandt's noble masterpieces he soon evolved a new method of painting, and it is only in works produced after this time that Troyon's true individuality is revealed. When he became conscious of his power as an animal painter he developed with rapidity and success, until his works became recognized as masterpieces in Great Britain and America, as well as in all countries of the Continent. Success, however, came too late, for Troyon never quite believed in it himself, and even when he could command the market of several countries he still grumbled loudly at the way the world treated him. Yet he was decorated with the Legion of Honour, and five times received medals at the Paris Salon, while Napoleon III. was one of his patrons; and it is certain he was at least as financially successful as his Barbizon colleagues.
Troyon died, unmarried, at Paris on the zist of February 1865, after a term of clouded intellect. All his famous pictures are of date between 1850 and 1864, his earlier work being of comparatively little value. His mother, who survived him, instituted the Troyon prize for animal pictures at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Troyon's work is fairly well known to the public through a number of large engravings from his pictures. In the Wallace Gallery in London are " Watering Cattle " and " Cattle in Stormy Weather "; in the Glasgow Corporation Gallery is a "Landscape with Cattle"; the Louvre contains his famous " Oxen at Work " and " Returning to the Farm "; while the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other galleries in America contain fine examples of his pictures. His " Vallee de la Toucque, Normandy," is one of his greatest pictures; and at Christie's sale-room in 1902 the single figure of a cow in a landscape of but moderate quality fetched 7350. Emile van Marcke (1827-1891) was his best-known pupil.
See H. Dumesnil, Constant Troyon: Souvenirs intimes (Paris, 1888); A. Hustin, "Troyon," L' 'Art, pp. 77 and 85 (Paris, 1889); Albert Wolff, " Constant Troyon," La Capitate de I' art (Paris, 1886); D. C. Thomson, The Barbizon School of Painters (London, 1890); " Constant Troyon," The Art Journal (1893), p. 22. (D. C. T.)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
