Paul-Désiré Trouillebert (1829-1900) - The end of the road

Oil on canvas signed lower left

Dimensions : H.19,5 x W.25 cm (with frame : H.29 x W.34,5 cm)

Paul-Désiré Trouillebert was born in 1829 in Paris. In France, he is one of the best outdoor landscape painters of the 19th century, and probably the artist closest to Corot with whom he had a strong relationship. Trouillebert's touch, light and airy, allows him to play with transparency; his palette, essentially composed of blues, greens and browns, has a very particular tone thanks to the ochre preparation that Trouillebert put on his canvases and panels before painting, and which constitutes like his second signature. Like Corot, he declared "I only work from nature, I do not admit the study copied in the studio.

Trouillebert is attached to the Barbizon school, his style is well marked, easily recognizable by an expert. Trained by the academic portraitist Ernest Hébert, Trouillebert was first accepted for his portraits and nudes at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1865, where he exhibited until 1884. He traveled all over France, but his subjects on the banks of the Loire and the Seine are indisputably the most sought after. It is indeed in the execution of moving waters, animated skies and birch trees shaken by the wind that the artist excels.

This small format concentrates the best of Trouillebert. We find his favorite subjects with a large part left to a living sky, a river bank and a character walking near the trees. The sky, blue and luminous, is treated with a lot of lightness, as well as the foliage which lets see the distance. The character is worked in full pate, quickly sketched as in a comic strip: the attitude is right, the movement perfectly suggested. The few touches of white and yellow matter in the vegetation catch the light. We feel in this work the quick gesture and the total mastery of the artist. And finally, we must focus on the excellent composition of this painting which gives the viewer this impression of peaceful happiness: the vanishing lines all converge towards the center of the work, the destination point of the character, like the end of the road of a quiet life.

Museums in which works by Paul Désiré Trouillebert can be found:

            Paris, Musée d'Orsay and Petit Palais

            New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

            Baltimore, Walters Art Museum

            Cleveland, Museum of Art

            Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum

            Valparaiso, Fine Arts Museum

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