Cattle Pasture in the Touraine, 1853
Constant Troyon
French, 1810–1865

Parisian middle-class audiences greatly admired the realism of Constant Troyon’s representations of cows and his rendering of light and shifting cloud formations. Inspired by Dutch animal painters of the 1600s, Troyon captured France’s diverse farm animals in the naturalistic style associated with the Barbizon School. These idyllic scenes emphasizing traditional agrarian life were popular in the 1800s, a time when the Industrial Revolution was driving peasants off the land to find work in the city.

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