The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Friendship and admiration for Rousseau had a great effect on the life of Virgilio Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (1808-76), commonly known as Diaz. This painter was born at Bordeaux, whither his father, a political refugee, had fled from Spain, and after his death, which occurred soon afterwards, Mme Diaz removed to Sèvres, where she supported her young family by giving lessons in Spanish and Italian. When he was fifteen years old he was apprenticed to learn china painting, but he soon tired of working at the factory, and spent all his spare time in painting romantic Eastern scenes from his imagination. About 1830, while still earning his living by painting on porcelain, Diaz met Rousseau in Paris, and this acquaintance ripened into a lifelong friendship. Taught by Rousseau how to use pure and brilliant colors so that his pictures glowed like jewels, the pictures of Diaz appealed to the public by their subjects and were soon sought after. At first Diaz painted nymphs and bathers, mythological subjects and oriental scenes, the last so brilliant in color that it is difficult to believe Diaz never saw the Orient and never traveled farther than a few hundred miles from Paris.

Though he had little to complain about on his own account, Diaz shared the fortunes of his friend Rousseau, and accompanied him to Barbizon in 1837. There he gave his mind almost entirely to landscape, and made a new reputation by his brilliant forest pictures with light glancing on the tree stems.

Like Diaz and Dupré, the famous cattle painter Troyton (1810-65) began as a painter on porcelain. His father, who had been employed at the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, died early, and while quite young boys Troyon and his brother earned a living by painting on china at the manufactory, and in their spare time sketched from Nature in the surrounding country. It was not till he was thirty-two that Constant Troyon was able to leave Sèvres and commence his studies in Paris, and for some years his progress was hampered by the somewhat niggling style of painting he had acquired from the habit of decorating porcelain, but devoting himself especially to the painting of animals he gradually acquired strength and breadth, though he was nearly forty before he gained the power that has since made him famous. When he did find himself, however, the success of Troyon was immediate. He was speedily recognized by his contemporaries as the greatest animal painter since Cuyp and Paul Potter, and the demand for his work was so great that Troyon sometimes employed other painters to put in backgrounds and accessories. Troyon excelled in showing living beasts in their natural surroundings, and the landscapes in his cattle pictures are not mere ‘back-cloths’ but genuine studies which interpret with sincerity the weather, the time of day, and the season of the year. His most famous masterpiece is his great painting ‘Oxen going to Work’ in the Louvre, in which the superb rendering of the animals is equalled by the splendor with which the artist has rendered the full glory of the early morning landscape.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)