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Ad Code: 3
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from Auction House Records.
Massoud with Yusef Bedra in Extensive Landscape
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born near Lausanne, Switzerland in 1808, Edward Troye became one of the
first United States artists to specialize in animal subjects. He
was the foremost mid-19th century painter of horses, creating nearly
360 paintings and numerous drawings. He also painted portraits of
leading preachers of the day including Reverend Joseph Stiles.
Other subjects were prize livestock and equestrian figure portraits
such as two equestrian portraits of General Winfield Scott", the Civil
War General. One of the portraits, commissioned by the Virginia
legislature before the outbreak of the Civil Was, was hung just before
the war by the artist on the east staircase of the House of
Representatives with the hope that someone would pay his price of
$6,000. However, the start of the War doomed that potential sale.
Troye,
described as being deeply religious and having a "refined, cultivated
nature", (Fairman 320) was raised in London in a cultured environment
by his parents who, for political reasons, were exiles from
France. His father was sculptor and painter Jean Baptiste de
Troy; a brother, Charles Troye became a noted historical painter; a
sister, Esperance Paligi, was a linquist and musician---the first woman
admitted to the Paris Conservatory of Music. Another sister,
Marie Thirion was a sculptor, who lived in Verona, Italy.
Troye's
father, encouraged by attention his son received from the royal family
for sketches of Windsor Castle, enrolled Edward at age fourteen to
study art. Several years later, the father became involved in an
engineering scheme, which led the family to go separate ways, and the
son, Edward, left for the New World.
In 1828, he became a
plantation bookkeeper in the West Indies, but he had bad health.
In 1831, he moved to Philadelphia and became staff illustrator for Sartain's Magazine.
As part of his job, he traveled in the Southern states including
Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans, Louisiana; Tennessee
and Kentucky. In 1832, he exhibited his horse paintings at the
Pennsylvania Academy, which launched his career as a portrait painter
of prize racehorses. It was written that "as a painter of
famous horses, he became very popular, and there were few race horses
of note that were not at some period painted by Troye." (Fairman 320)
One
of his earliest commissions was for the owner of Woodburne Farms near
Lexington, Kentucky, a town where he ultimately lived between 1837 and
1849. In 1836, he worked at Magnolia plantation near
Natchitoches, Louisiana, and in 1844, advertised as a portrait painter
in New Orleans where he exhibited his race horse painting, Peytona,
at the St. Charles Exchange. A wealthy Louisiana patron of
Troye's was Duncan Kenner, a sugar plantation and racing stable owner,
for whom he painted six horse portraits.
From 1849 to 1855,
Edward Troye lived in Mobile, Alabama, and served as Professor of
Painting and French at Spring Hill College. From 1855 to 1856, he
traveled in the Near East with Alexander Keene Richards, a horse
breeder from Georgetown, Kentucky; and there Troye did paintings of
Arabian horses for Richards. He also did a series of Holy Land
and Arabia paintings, which he exhibited in New Orleans in 1857.
Included were The Dead Sea, Sea of Tiberius, and Jordan Bethabara.
He painted the originals on site and then did duplicates in his
brother's studio in Antwerp, Belgium. Troye presented the copies
to Mr. Richards, who allowed Troye to exhibit them in Canada and the
United States before the Civil War. The paintings were ultimately
given to Bethany College of Virginia.
From 1857 to 1869, Edward
Troye lived primarily in Kentucky and then moved to Huntsville,
Alabama. He died five years later in Georgetown, Kentucky.
An illustrated book by him titled The Race Horses of America was published in 1867 and was intended to be the first of a series. However, he never got beyond the first volume.
Sources:
Charles E. Fairman, Art & Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
John Mahe, Encyclopedia of Artists in New Orleans |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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