It was only when the landscape school of Fontainebleau had initiated a new method of vision, feeling, and expression that France produced a new great painter of animals. As Dupré and Rousseau tower over their predecessors Cabat and Flandrin in landscape, so _Constant Troyon_ rises above Brascassat in animal painting. In the latter there may be found a scrupulous pedantic observation in union with a thin, polished, academic, and carefully arranged style of painting; in the former, a large and broad technique in harmony with wild nature, and a directness and force of intuition without parallel in the history of art. Brascassat belongs to the same category as Denner, Troyon to that of Frans Hals and Brouwer. There would be no purpose in saying anything of his labours in the china manufactory of Sèvres, of his industrial works, and of the little classical views with which he made a first appearance in the Salon in 1833, or of the impulse which he received from Roqueplan. He first found his own powers when he made the acquaintance of Théodore Rousseau and Jules Dupré, and migrated with them into the forest of Fontainebleau. At the headquarters of the new school his ideas underwent a revolution. Here, in the first instance, as a landscape painter, he was attracted by the massive forms of cattle, which make such a harmonious effect of colour in the atmosphere and against verdure, and the philosophic quietude of which gives such admirable completion to the dreamy spirit of nature. A journey to Holland and Belgium in 1847, in the course of which he became more familiar with the old animal painters, confirmed him in the resolve of devoting himself exclusively to this province. He was captivated not so much by Paul Potter as by Albert Cuyp, with his rich and powerful colouring, and his technique, which is at once so virile and so easy. But above all Rembrandt became his great ideal, and filled him with wonder. In his first masterpiece of 1849, "The Mill," the influence of the great Dutch artist is clearly recognisable, and from that time up to 1855 it remained dominant. In this year, during a prolonged sojourn in Normandy, he became Troyon, and painted "Oxen going to their Work," that mighty picture in the Louvre which displays him in the zenith of his creative power. Till then no animal painter had rendered with such a combination of strength and actuality the long, heavy gait, the philosophical indifference, and the quiet resignation of cattle, the poetry of autumnal light, and the mist of morning rising lightly from the earth and veiling the whole land with grey, silvery hues. The deeply furrowed smoking field makes an undulating ascent, so that one seems to be looking at the horizon over the broad face of the earth. A primitive, Homeric feeling rests over it.