Signed on left:—“corot.”
Painted in oil on canvas.
1 ft. 1¾ in. × 1 ft. 9¼ in. (0·35 × 0·54.)
C. TROYON
This oneness of inanimate and animate nature is less completely realised in the art of Constant Troyon (1810–1865), who, having been trained as a porcelain-painter, was subsequently attracted by the romanticism of Dupré, but followed such Dutch masters as Paul Potter in subordinating the landscape to the cattle. It is for this reason that Troyon is known to the public as a “cattle-painter” rather than as a landscape painter. At the same time, he was a close observer of the effects of light on fields and meadows, which he rendered with a skill only rivalled by the solidity, the suggestion of weight and movement, the well-accentuated forms and sinuosities of his cattle. The huge canvas Oxen going to Work (No. 889) is an unrivalled achievement of its kind—a piece of realism that is not without poetry and grandeur. Next to it in importance ranks the Return to the Farm (No. 890). Among the eleven Troyons (Nos. 2906–2916) of the Thomy Thiéry Bequest, the Morning (No. 2909) strikes a more cheerful and hopeful note than is this artist’s wont.
Another artist of this group, who devoted himself almost exclusively to the painting of sheep, is Charles Jacque (1813–1894), from whose brush the Louvre owns the Flock of Sheep in a Landscape (No. 430a), a characteristic work of unusually large dimensions.
J. DUPRÉ
Jules Dupré (1811–1889) began, like Troyon, as a china-painter, and, like Rousseau, with whom he was for years on terms of intimate friendship, benefited by the example of Constable, whose art he had presumably occasion to study during a visit to England. It was from him that he acquired the sense of movement in nature, which is so much more pronounced in his landscapes than in Rousseau’s, whom he exceeded in breadth of touch and in power. More particularly in his later manner he loved to apply his colours in a thick impasto laid on to every part of the canvas, including the sky. Only on rare occasions did he adopt the more fluid, suave manner shown in Morning (No. 2940) and Evening (No. 2941), the two decorative panels executed for Prince Demidoff, and acquired by the Louvre in 1880 at the San Donato sale. More typical of his virile, forceful style are the twelve signed pictures by Dupré in the Thomy Thiéry Bequest (Nos. 2864–2875), especially the fine autumn landscape The Pond (No. 2867, [Plate L.]), the intensely sad, sunless Flock in the Landes (No. 2871), The Large Oak (No. 2873), and The Sunset on a Marsh (No. 2874), with the golden glow of the sky reflected in the water.
Before turning to Diaz, who has been aptly called “the most romantic of the Romanticists,” we must briefly mention Eugène Isabey (1804–1886), who connects the art of the First Empire with Romanticism, and who knew how to invest his historical paintings with genuinely pictorial interest at a time when that class of subject was generally treated from the literary and anecdotal point of view. His exuberant temperament led him not infrequently to exaggerated movement. The twelve pictures which bear his signature at the Louvre (Nos. 2878–2884, 2953–2956, and 2953a) are illustrative of every phase of his art. As a landscape painter he may be considered a forerunner of Rousseau.