Constant Troyon

"..learn to draw: that's where most of you [Troyon's pupils] are falling down today.. ..draw with all your might; you can never learn to much. However, don't neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them."

"I have made as many as eighteen [rather definitive sketches of cattle] in one month.."

"Year after year I went with Troyon to Barbizon. On rainy days, when we were unable to sketch in the forest, we visited the farms where the watchers of cattle and the tenders of geese posed as our models; more often still to the stables, where we painted the animals. Here Troyon executed the most charming things in the world; and from 1846 to 1848 I constantly implored him to introduce them into his landscapes."

"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 Rembrandt'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."

"It is the early morning [in the painting 'Windmill' . The sun struggles dimly amid the enveloping mist; the wind rises; then the huge old frame, with worm eaten planks, begins to creak with regular throbs, like the beatings of the heart, as the great membranous wings stretch themselves in silhouette against the pale splendor of the dawn."

"He [Troyon] does not sentimentalize his animals, nor concern himself with the drama of their character and gesture. He takes them as components in a general scheme; and he paints them as he has seen them in Nature - enveloped in atmosphere and light, and in an environment of grass and streams and living leafage."

"Among Troyon's paintings there are two huge ones; 'Return to the Farm' is marvelous with its beautiful stormy sky. There is much windy motion in the clouds, and the cows and dogs are very good. In Going to the Market you see the mist at sunrise. It's superb and, most of all, very luminous. The wide space in View from Surennes is amazing. You feel you are really in the countryside."

"Did not Troyon tell me to enter the studio of Couture [in Paris]? It is needless to tell you how decided was my refusal to do so [End of 1859]. I admit even that it cooled me, temporarily at least, in my esteem and admiration of Troyon.. ..and [I] after all, connected myself only with artists who were seeking."

"Your description of Troyon and Rousseau, for instance, is lively enough to give me some idea of which of their manners they are done in. There were other paintings from the time of Troyon's municipal pasture that had a certain 'mood' that one would have to call 'dramatic', even though they aren't figure paintings."

"The first years of the painter [Troyon] were dogged by poverty, which saturated his spirit with a bitterness from which it never got free. Arrived later, by the evolution of his style, to renown and wealth, Troyon preserved the gloom of these humble beginnings. In this he was at fault. Did he not share the public neglect with the first landscape painters of the age? Had he suffered more, and more unjustly, than the chiefs of his company [the painters of Barbizon]? And then, if I must express my full opinion, would the canvases of Troyon, as a landscapist grandly brushed as they are, have sufficed to establish his high renown?"

"It was accident and a journey to Holland which revealed to Troyon his true mission, that of an animal painter of the first rank.. .At a distance of two centuries Troyon continued the traditions of the celebrated Dutch animal painters without imitating them. Paul Potter was to find a successor worthy of him.. .Fancy the astonishment at the sight of Troyon's animals, with their large life, their broad brush-work in deep, pure colors, studied with a discriminating sympathy for every race and species, and moving through landscapes of a master's creation. These were not the fashionable stuffed beasts, but living, moving herds, stretching themselves luxuriously in the sun, breathing the breezes cool with morning, or huddling close together at the approach of the storm."