TROYON, trIvii'yONf, CONSTANT (1810-65). A French landscape and animal painter of the Fontainebleau-Barbison school. He was born at Sevres, August 25. 1810, and worked while a youth as a decorator in the porcelain factory, re ceiving meanwhile lessons in design from Riocruz and later from Poupart. At the age of twenty he began as a landscape painter by making studies in the fields. His first Salon pictures, exhibited in 1833, were mediocre in character. A fortunate acquaintance with the romanticist Roqueplan modified his style and brought him the acquain tance of Rousseau. and a closer association with Diaz and Dupre, his fellow-workers at the Sevres factory. (See BARBISON SCHOOL.) Of great im portance for his career was his visit, in 1847, to Holland, where his observation of the rich animal life of the fields, together with his study of Dutch art, gave a new direction to his own work. Be found inspiration in Potter and Cuyp, and modified his technique after the example of Rembrandt. From 1848 he became distinctively an animal painter. His animals, however, were never detached studies, but an integral part of the landscape. Success and fortune came to him early; he received first class medals in 1846, 1852, and 1855. and the decoration of the Legion of Honor in 1849, after which orders multiplied rapidly and his rapidity of execution sometimes resulted in inferior workmanship. In conse
quence of overwork he lost his reason in 1863, and he died in Paris, February 21, 1865.
Troyon is the principal animal painter of the French school, the worthy compeer of Potter and Cuyp. No man has succeeded better in por traying the character of animals—the stolid indifference of the ox, the helplessness of the sheep. But more than any other cattle painter he is a consummate master of landscape, which he portrays with an epic simplicity equaled only by Rousseau. At first rather heavy, his execu tion speedily became broad and impressive; his poetic treatment of light and color is that of the Harbison school. His pictures often bear no distinctive names beyond the general designa tion of landscape and cattle. In the Louvre are "Return from the Farm" (1849) and "Oxen Going to Work in the Fields" (1855) ; other fa mous examples are "Valley of the Tongues" (1853, Contesse Lehow). "Cart with Ass." "Sheep After Storm," "Cow Scratching Herself." There are good examples of his work in the pro vincial museums of France, and in the important private and public collections in the United States. Consult his biographies by Dumesnil (Paris, 1888); Hustin (ib., 1893) ; and Van Dyke, in Modern French Masters (New York, 1896),