Jean François de Troy

A reading of Molière, Jean François de Troy, about 1728

Jean François de Troy (January 27, 1679, Paris January 26, 1752, Rome) was a French Rococo painter (including frescoes) and tapestry designer. He was one of a family of painters, being the son of the portrait painter François de Troy (1645–1730), under whom he first studied, and at whose expense he first went to Italy from 1699 to 1706, staying in Rome, but also visiting many north Italian cities.

Biography

The Abduction of Europa, by Jean-François de Troy.

The successful career of de Troy was based initially on large historical and allegorical compositions, such as Time Unveiling Truth (1733, National Gallery, London), but he is now most highly regarded for his smaller (cabinet-sized) and more spirited scenes of elegant social life, painted in Paris between 1725 and 1738, when he went to Rome.[1] They are among the best of those that rode on the wave of Watteau's successindeed The Alarm, or the Gouvernante Fidèle (1723, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1723) was attributed to Watteau in the 19th century. A versatile artist, he made these tableaux de modes famous, while also painting histories and mythologies in a colourful and fluent manner which owed something to both Veronese and Peter Paul Rubens. Also in Rome he made the fresco one in the north aisle of the ancient basilica Santi Bonifacio ed Alessio depicting Saint Gerolamo Emiliani introducing orphans to the Virgin.

He undertook commissions for Versailles and Fontainebleau between 1724 and 1737, and designed two sets of tapestries for the Gobelins, each of seven subjects, the Histoire d'Esther (1737–40) and the Histoire de Jason (1743–46).

In 1738 he was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome and spent the rest of his life there. He was also elected as an honorary member of the Roman Academy of St Luke, and subsequently appointed briefly as director in 1744.[2] De Troy's wife died prematurely, and he lost all of his seven children. Jean François de Troy died on January 26, 1752 in Rome.

Main paintings

Princess Louisa Maria Teresa Stuart by Jean François de Troy, about 1700

Death of a stag (1737) wallce collection , london A hunt breakfast (1737) wallace collection, London

References

  1. Denise Amy Baxter, "Fashions of sociability in Jean-François de Troy's tableaux de mode, 1725-1738", in Alden Cavanaugh, ed. Performing the "Everyday": the culture of genre in the eighteenth century 2007:28.
  2. Memorie per servire alla storia della romana Accademia di San Luca by Melchiorre Missirini, page 221.
  3. D. & P. Kladstrup, Champagne, pg 41, Harper Collins Publisher, ISBN 0-06-073792-1.


External links

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