The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (484 page)

trompe-l'œil
.

Term (French for ‘deceives the eye’) applied to a painting (or detail of one) that is intended to deceive the spectator (if only briefly) into thinking that it is a real object rather than a two-dimensional representation of it. Such virtuoso displays of skill often have a humorous intent, and anecdotes of almost miraculous feats of
trompe-l'œil
by which some of the most famous painters of the past are said to have tricked and astonished their contemporaries are typical of periods in which
naturalism
has been cultivated, such as the
Classical
age in Greece (see
PARRHASIUS
) and the Italian
Renaissance
.
Vasari
, for example, records in evidence of
Giotto's
precocity that as a boy he painted on the nose of a figure on which his master
Cimabue
was engaged ‘a fly so lifelike that when Cimabue returned to carry on with his work he tried several times to brush it off with his hand, under the impression that it was real, before he realized his mistake’. Petrus
Christus's
Portrait of a Carthusian
(Met. Mus., New York,
c.
1446) is an example of a painting with such a
trompe-l'œil
fly, here on a painted ledge at the bottom of the picture, rather than on the sitter's nose. Sometimes the term
trompel'œil
is used loosely to refer to any type of pictorial illusionism (for example
quadratura
), but such usage deprives a useful term of its precision.

 
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(1697–1750).
The outstanding Dutch painter of the 18th cent. He made his name early with a lively group portrait of the
Amsterdam Inspectors of the Collegium Medicum
(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1724) and continued to enjoy success as a formal portraitist and painter of
conversation pieces
. He is best known for his pictures of actors in famous roles and for his witty
genre
scenes. His most famous work—made in his favourite technique of pastel and watercolour—is a series of five pictures entitled
NELRI
(Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1740); the name is derived from the first letters of the Latin inscriptions which accompany the five views of the activities of a group of men during the night of a reunion. Troost has much in common with his contemporary
Hogarth
, but unlike Hogarth, Troost is a humorist without an ulterior motive; he never attempted to teach or preach.

 
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(1679–1752).
French painter and tapestry designer. His successful career was based initially on large historical and allegorical compositions (
Time Unveiling Truth
, NG, London, 1733), but he is now most highly regarded for his smaller and more spirited scenes of elegant social life. They are among the best of those that rode on the wave of
Watteau's
success—indeed
The Alarm
(V & A, London, 1723) was attributed to Watteau in the 19th cent. In 1738 he was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome, and spent the rest of his life there. He was one of a family of painters, his father and teacher,
François de Troy
(1645–1730), being a successful painter of fashionable portraits and Director of the Academy in Paris.

 
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(1810–65).
French painter. He was born in Sèvres and began his career as a porcelain decorator (the family trade) at the famous factory there. In the 1830s, however, he took up landscape painting, and became one of the leading figures of the
Barbizon School
. He visited Holland in 1847, and the influence of
Cuyp
and
Potter
is seen in his predilection for including cows in his pictures. Late in his career he turned to seascapes, the freshness and freedom of his work influencing
Boudin
and
Monet
in this genre. Troyon was a prolific and successful painter, and his work is in many public collections in France and elsewhere.

 
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Trübner , Wilhelm
.

See
SEZESSION
.

 
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