Circle of CONSTANT TROYON(1810-1865) Landscape with Lily Pond and Cattle Grazing in the Distance,

Constant Troyon (1810 – 1865), was born in Sèvres, near Paris, where his father was connected with the famous manufactory of porcelain. Troyon was a landscape and animal painter of the first rank, and was closely associated with the artists who painted around Barbizon.

Troyon entered the ateliers very young as a decorator, and until he was twenty he labored 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.

Troyon was a favorite with Camille Roqueplan, an artist of distinction eight years his senior, and he became one of his pupils. Roqueplan introduced Troyon to Rousseau, Jules Dupré, and the other Barbizon painters, and in his pictures between 1840 and 1847 he seemed to endeavor to follow in their footsteps. In 1846, Troyon went to the Netherlands, and at The Hague he saw Paulus 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 in works produced after this time that Troyon's true individuality is more clearly 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 Britain and America, as well as in all countries of the Continent.

Troyon 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. Constant Troyon died in 1865 and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.

His mother, who survived him, instituted the Troyon prize for animal pictures at the École 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 paintings.