coming home series (excerpt)
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CLARICE SMITH:POWER & GRACE
Coming H
ome Series: Edw
ard Troye (1808-1874) Oct. 1, 2014 -M
ar. 29, 2015 National Sporting Library &
Museum
Coming Home SeriesEdward Troye (1808-1874)
NATIONAL SPORTING LIBRARY & MUSEUMMiddleburg, Virginia
2014
Coming Home SeriesEdward Troye (1808-1874)
Edward Troye and His Biographers:The Archives of Harry Worcester Smith and Alexander Mackay-Smith
October 1, 2014 – February 22, 2015 | Forrest E. Mars Sr. Exhibit Hall
Faithfulness to Nature: Paintings by Edward TroyeOctober 26, 2014 – March 29, 2015 | Museum
Table of Contents
Preface ixMelanie Leigh Mathewes
Foreword xiManuel H. Johnson
Edward Troye and His Biographers: The Archives of Harry Worcester Smith and Alexander Mackay-Smith 15Martha Wolfe
Edward Troye’s Obituary 30
Faithfulness to Nature: Paintings by Edward Troye 33Claudia Pfeiffer Plates 49
Illustration Details & Credits 134
Endnotes 141
Bibliography 143
Index 144
Foreword xi
ForewordManuel H. Johnson | Chairman of the Board, National Sporting Library & Museum
The Coming Home Series, an exciting new program developed
at the National Sporting Library & Museum, pairs one of our John H.
Daniels Fellows with NSLM curators to research the Library’s ex-
tensive holdings and plan exhibitions and publication projects. The
first in this series is a focus on the nineteenth century animal artist,
Edward Troye (1808-1874). His work in particular epitomizes the aim
of the series to mine some of the most important holdings of the
Library.
Held here in the archives are the papers and research of two
eminent sporting scholars, Harry Worcester Smith (1865-1945) and
Alexander Mackay-Smith (1903-1998) who were instrumental in
bringing Troye’s role in early American art to light in the twentieth
century. As an artist, Troye’s paintings were commissioned all across
the country by the leading Thoroughbred breeders and owners of
the mid-nineteenth century. As a chronicler of American bloodlines,
reproductions and reviews of Troye’s imagery became staples of
popular turf and field magazines of the era. This combination of
printed material and original paintings embodies NSLM’s mission
to preserve, promote, and share the literature, art, and culture of turf
and field sports.
Martha Wolfe, a 2012/2013 John H. Daniels Fellow, returned
to our archives during the first half of this year to work on her essay,
Edward Troye and His Biographers: The Archives of Harry Worcester Smith
and Alexander Mackay-Smith, which is included in this catalogue.
From her research, the NSLM Curatorial Department developed an
exhibition with the same title featuring paintings, prints, papers,
and ephemera in the Forrest E. Mars, Sr. Exhibit Hall, on view in the
Library until February 22, 2015. Most of the items on display are from
NSLM collections, with the inclusion of a few key loans. One loan
from the Yale Center for British Art library is a rare book entitled
Race Horses of America (First series) by Edward Troye, printed in 1867,
and bound by Worcester Smith with a foreword he wrote in 1930.
The exhibition and Wolfe’s in-depth essay bring to life the incredible
story of how Worcester Smith rediscovered Troye’s art and Mackay-
Smith brought his scholarship to completion with the publication
of his expansive biography and catalogue of Troye’s artwork, Race
Forewordxii
Horses of America 1832-1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward
Troye, in 1981.
The NSLM’s George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator Claudia Pfeiffer
developed her essay for the Museum exhibition Faithfulness to Nature:
Paintings by Edward Troye, relying heavily on Mackay-Smith’s defini-
tive book, Wolfe’s research, and other contemporary sources. With
the assistance of NSLM Museum Exhibitions and Collections Chair
F. Turner Reuter, Jr., forty-two important paintings and sketches
have been gathered from public and private collections, including:
The Jockey Club, Bethany College, Yale Center for British Arts, Vir-
ginia Museum of Fine Arts, National Museum of Racing and Hall of
Fame, Pebble Hill Plantation, and the NSLM.
This major exhibition on view through March 29, 2015, ap-
peals to both enthusiasts of turf and field sports and American
sporting art. It develops a narrative of Troye’s immense skill as a
naturalist observer and painter of animals who attained great suc-
cess and recognition among the leaders of the horse racing industry
in a time when American art was still maturing. Among the works
that have been brought together are Donkey and Goat, 1823, a sensitive
charcoal study completed by Troye when he was just fifteen years old
before immigrating to the United States; portraits of foundational
Thoroughbreds such as American Eclipse, Henry, Glencoe, and
Boston; Troye’s famous self portrait painted while he was in Mobile,
Alabama; two acclaimed mural-sized paintings, A Bazaar in Damas-
cus, 1856, and Syrian Ploughman, 1856; and his final painting, Waverly,
1872.
Bringing material of such magnitude “home” to the National
Sporting Library & Museum is thrilling, for both our staff and visi-
tors. It brings a fresh perspective to the artist and the broad scope
of his work. We hope you enjoy the first of what promises to be an
innovative series.
Edward Troye and His Biographers 15
Edward Troye and His BiographersThe Archives of Harry Worcester Smith and Alexander Mackay-Smith
Martha Wolfe | National Sporting Library & Museum John H. Daniels Fellow
E dward Troye’s transcribed diary of his trip to the Holy
Land in 1855 is held in the National Sporting Library &
Museum’s (NSLM) archives. Also in the archives are Harry Worcester
Smith’s papers, which chronicle his quest for Troye’s movements and
muses a half-century later. And it was in the archives, within Harry
Worcester Smith’s papers, that Alexander Mackay-Smith found in-
spiration to write what is still considered the definitive text on Amer-
ica’s greatest animal portraitist: The Race Horses of America 1832-1872:
Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye (The National Museum
of Racing, 1981). Here in the archives, in boxes stacked nearly to the
ceiling, is the story of three men whose lives spanned two centuries,
whose interests overlapped and whose souls were kindred: artist
Edward Troye (1808-1874), the indomitable sportsman Harry Worces-
ter Smith (1864-1945) and scholar, chronicler and author Alexander
Mackay-Smith (1903-1998).
Edward Troye had taken the trip of his lifetime to the Dead
“I reached the Dead Sea the 6th of March 1856 having been there the day before on my way to Jerico [sic]. We pitched our tent on the 6th and I commenced painting on the 7th and continued painting until the 19th … Nothing can be more dreary…The evaporation going on is so great as to produce quite a hazyness [sic] preventing the distance from be-ing clearly seen, while the atmosphere presents a foggy appearance.”
Edward Troye and His Biographers 21
Smith began by contacting the Post Masters in every little
hometown of Troye’s and his patrons’ families, asking for informa-
tion of the whereabouts of
their living relatives. Word of
his quest got around, which
must have set off a firestorm
of speculation on the value
of Troye’s work. “Some few
weeks ago,” Mr. J. Churchill
Newcomb, editor of The Chase
Magazine writes to Smith,
“while motoring in the Blue
Grass I came across a very odd
character who had heard of
your interest in Troye paint-
ings, so he packed his kit and
went down to the far South, to
see if he could also unearth any
unknown relics in that part of
the country. He returned with
six Troyes which he tells me
you have never seen…I cannot
remember the name nor the address of the little Scotchman that had
the six, but I am enough of a countryman to get back to him again
and if you are interested, I will obtain further information when I
next am in that part of the Blue Grass.”
Another correspondent, Tom
Lindsey of Louisville, Kentucky
writes: “The Singleton that
I had was 26 x 32 inches in
size and in perfect condition,
figure of horse only. Since
receiving your letter, have
purchased one of Limington
and one of Lexington [plates
35 & 36], both 25 x 30 inches,
however, within the last week
have sold all three. Am now
after a small head of horse at
watering-trough…”9 One series
of correspondences between
Smith and the Lucius P. Brown
family of Ewell Farm in Spring
Hill, Tennessee, in which
Smith attempts to secure two
photographs for documenta-
tion, spans nearly a decade between March, 1930 and November, 1938.
In September, 1924, C. E. Marvin, commissioner of Kentucky’s De-
fig. 6. Notes referencing Edward Troye paintings that Harry Worcester Smith catalogued during his visit to the home of Keene Richards’ widow, c. 1920National Sporting Library & Museum, Harry Worcester Smith Archives
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye24
A lexander Mackay-Smith met Harry Worcester Smith on the
hunt field in Virginia’s Loudoun Valley late in the 1930s. Mack-
ay-Smith writes about his friend: “He was then 70 years old, had only
half of one lung in working order, and could gallop for not more than
a mile or two…”13
“Who will continue my accumulation of thought, feeling and
art?” Harry Worcester Smith mused, in a hand-written note on the
back of an envelope found framed in the National Sporting Library &
Museum’s archives. No date is given. When did he transcribe his fear
that all he had done, contemplated, worked for and completed would
go unnoticed, or worse, forgotten? [fig. 1]
March 23, 1945, Harry Worcester Smith was helping Mrs. John
Osgood Blanchard, (Elizabeth Amis Cameron Blanchard) author of
The Life and Times of Sir Archie [Sir Archy]: the story of America’s greatest
thoroughbred, 1805-1833, plan “one of her celebrated Sporting Break-
fasts.”14 The guest list includes “Mr. A. Mackay-Smith, Master Blue
Ridge Hunt, studious collector and historian, and Mrs. A. Mackay-
Smith, successful breeder of ponies, etc.” The breakfast was to take
place April 10. Smith died on the sixth. Carvel Collins, who compiled
a portfolio of engravings, most of which are based on Troye’s paint-
ings, titled The American Sporting Gallery: Portraits of American Horses
from Spirit of the Times 1839-1844, wrote to Alexander Mackay-Smith on
April 11, “Mr. Harry Worcester Smith on the day before he died gave
me his compliments on your interest and skill in historical research
Fig. 8. Wallace Wilson Nall (American 1923 – 2003)after a painting by Jean Bowman (American, 1917 – 1994)Alexander MacKay-Smith, 1955, painted 1999oil on canvas, 44 x 35 ½ inchesNational Sporting Library & MuseumGift of an anonymous donor
Faithfulness to Nature 35
Faithfulness to Nature Paintings by Edward Troye
Claudia Pfeiffer | George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator, National Sporting Library & Museum
Two draft pages of Edward Troye’s obituary written in the
flowing handwriting of Alexander Keene Richards on July 25, 1874,
the morning of the artist’s passing, are held in the archives of the
National Sporting Library & Museum. It is a daunting task to craft a
testimony to someone’s life and career for posterity. In the final ver-
sion which appeared in Richard’s hometown paper, The Weekly Times,
he noted, “Troye’s paintings were studies from nature, faithful to a
fault, but never mechanical. He was no imitator. He had a style of
his own, and often said it was his head that painted his pictures, not
his hand.” 2 The concept of presenting a realistic interpretation of an
observed subject within its environment, also known as naturalism,
had gained momentum in art. Troye would finally attain recogni-
tion for his significant contributions to animal, sporting, and early
American art in the twentieth century, but most profoundly he was a
gifted naturalist painter.
Richards was Troye’s champion in life and in death. He was a
loyal patron and friend for thirty years from the time the artist traveled
with him to purchase Arabian horses from the Bedouins until Troye died
at Richards’ Blue Grass Park in Georgetown, Kentucky. Richards had
even built a studio for him there in the last years of his life. The phrasing
of the obituary echoes writings by Troye in his 1856 Oriental Paintings
pamphlet which accompanied the masterworks he created on com-
mission for Richards while they were in the Middle East:
Edward Troye, the Artist, was selected by a gentleman of the South to transfer from nature, and true to nature, the scenes which these paintings represent…He has followed his profession in this country for more than twenty years; and his faithful-ness to nature in all his delineations is well known to his many patrons throughout this country…The Artist, in his execution of the work, claims no merit beyond a faithful representation of Nature, having avoided all creations of his own imagination…”3
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye36
In the pamphlet Troye also boasted, “The Artist was Educated
in London and Had the Advantage of the Best Masters.” He noted
that “he commenced his profession as an animal painter after the
style of Stubbs and Sartorius” but never expanded on who his teach-
ers were. 4 It can, however, be safely assumed that Troye’s innate
talents were encouraged by his father, Jean-Baptiste de Troy, a Swiss
sculptor of French descent.
Edward Troye was born Edouard de Troy on July 12, 1808, in
Lausanne, Switzerland. His mother died when he was an infant, and
his father brought him and his three siblings to London, where they
were raised in the French Quarter. They all pursued the arts. Troye’s
brother Charles de Troy became a painter active in Antwerp; one
sister, Marie de Troy Thirion, sculpted medals; and the other, Esper-
ance Paligi, became a musician and the first woman to be accepted
into the Paris Conservatory of Music. The young Troye proved his
talent as an animal artist at a young age. Donkey and Goat, 1823 [plate
1], a sensitively-executed charcoal study, is his earliest known surviv-
ing work and displays artistic maturity well beyond his fifteen years.
Additionally, the signature, “E. Troye.” is evidence that the
artist had already anglicized his name to Edward Troye prior to
immigrating to the United States. Troye arrived in Philadelphia on
October 5, 1831 at the age of 23. The largest city in the United States
at the time, it was already a major cultural center attracting interna-
tional artists to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, established
in 1805. In May 1832, within six months of his arrival, three of Troye’s
paintings were accepted for exhibition at the venerable institution:
Attack of a Lion Upon a Horse, likely inspired by George Stubbs; Bear
Hunting and Attack, after a painting by Franz Snyders (Flemish, 1579 –
1657), and Portraits of a Celebrated Horse and His Rider.
There is no recorded description of the latter composition
other than the title, but it is likely that this work garnered him at-
tention and set him on his path as an equine portraitist. He was in
impressive company. Others who exhibited in 1832 were historical
painter Benjamin West, portraitist Gilbert Stuart, and portrait en-
graver John Sartain.
While Keene Richards’ obituary notes that Troye was first
employed in the “Art Department of Sartain’s Magazine,” John Sartain
did not start Sartain’s Union Magazine until 1848. The two, however, had
much in common and traveled in the same circles. The artists were the
same age, both emigrated from England, and each moved to the United
States within one year of each other. By the time Troye arrived, Sartain
was one of the top mezzotinters in Philadelphia. In the May 1832 exhibi-
tion, Sartain exhibited five engravings after portrait paintings, includ-
ing a self-portrait by English artist Thomas Lawrence and two composi-
tions by Academy Chairman Thomas Sully. One of these was a portrait
of Nicholas Biddle, brother-in-law and silent breeding partner of Troye’s
first patron, race horse owner John Charles Craig. It is highly likely that
Craig and Troye became acquainted through the exhibition.5
Faithfulness to Nature 37
Troye’s artwork must have stood out. In the catalog he was
listed as a “Painter of Animals etc.” The prevalence of portraits,
epic scenes, and mythical subjects was beginning to make room for
portrayals of landscapes and animals. According to Anna Wells Rut-
ledge who compiled the Academy’s cumulative record of exhibition
catalogs from 1807 to 1870: “The works exhibited at the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts can be classified briefly as, one ‘Old Masters’;
two ‘Great Exhibition Paintings’; three, fashionable, contemporary
genre and landscape, American and European; and, four, endless
portraits”6
It was an innovative time in the international art scene. The
tenets of naturalism in England and France had already produced
some of the finest animal and sporting artists by the beginning of
the nineteenth century. Although American painter Benjamin West
was an innovator, gaining recognition abroad by becoming the
second President of the Royal Academy in London, American art was
still defined by the influence of artists who trained in European cen-
ters and came to the United States. A truly American artistic expres-
sion originating from within its borders was just beginning to take
shape. 7
The 1832 exhibition was the only time that Troye exhibited at
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. There is no evidence that he
tried to enter works again, and it is unlikely that his paintings would
have been rejected for exhibition, in light of contemporaries who
exhibited. For example, Henri DeLattre, a respected French painter
who worked in America and was not regarded as highly as Troye
by connoisseurs of sporting art and art historians, exhibited at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, National Academy of Design in
New York, Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, and at the Paris
Salon in France. It is more likely that Troye no longer saw the need
to exhibit after his introduction to the flood of patrons who would
support him for the rest of his career. 8
fig. 11. Henri DeLattre (French, 1801 - 1876)Carriage Horse with a Docked Tail, 1854oil on board, 8 x 10 inchesNational Sporting Library & Museum,Gift of the Family of Duffy Rathburn, 2009
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye50
Faithfulness to Nature 51
Plate 1
Donkey and Goat, 1823charcoal on paper 13 x 18 ¾ inches National Sporting Library & MuseumGift of Ms. Elizabeth J. D. Jeffords, 2008
While the work is signed with Troye’s anglicized name, it is inscribed with the location “8
Soho Square” and the date in French, “13 7bre [July] 1823.” The address is in the heart of the French
quarter of London that had once housed the Soho Academy until 1805. Artists such as Thomas
Rowlandson and J.M.W. Turner had attended, but it had long since folded by 1823 when Troye,
at the age of fifteen, drew the donkey and goat with expressive eyes and subtle shading. Troye
usually sketched from life. Quite possibly he saw the animals at the square. Plate 22 of John B.
Papworth’s series of engravings, Select Views of London, published in 1816, depicts farm animals
being herded through the Soho Square next to its park, Soho Square Gardens.
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye66
Plate 9
American Eclipse, 1834oil on canvas 24 ½ x 29 ¾ inches The Jockey Club
This vibrant painting of American Eclipse, by Duroc, out of Miller’s Damsel, done in 1834
has a similar background to the study from life Troye sketched of the horse standing to stud
at Snedecker’s farm on Long Island [fig. 13]. This version of the famous race horse American
Eclipse was reproduced in the New York Sporting Magazine in September 1834. The first oil paint-
ing completed of the Thoroughbred in April 1834 was done for either Colonel William Ransom
Johnson or Walter Livingston who had bought American Eclipse at auction for $8,050 in 1828. In
the same public auction, Henry, the famed rival in the May 1823 match race, was purchased by
Livingston’s cousin, Robert Livingston Stevens.
The great match race between American Eclipse and Henry in May 1823 marked the resur-
gence of horse racing in this country after the War of 1812 and a twelve-year ban on racing driven
by anti-gambling sentiment. With the opening of the Union Race Course on Long Island in 1821,
American Eclipse was brought out of retirement to serve as the Northern contender for a series of
match races against various Southern horses. This culminated in the May 1823 race at the Union
Race Course. The race had become legendary in horse racing by the time Troye painted the iconic
horses a decade later.
Faithfulness to Nature 67
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye92
Plate 22
Self-Portrait, 1852oil on canvas 38 x 54 ¼ inches Yale University Art Gallery, Whitney Collections of Sporting Art, given in memory of Harry Payne Whitney, B.A. 1894, and Payne Whitney, B.A. 1898 by Francis P. Garvan, B.A. 1897, M.A. (Hon.) 1922
Completed November 8, 1852, Troye presented the painting to his niece and her husband.
The self-portrait is another iconic work completed during his time in Alabama. The forty-four
year old artist is shown dapperly dressed and sits atop a carriage pulled by a gray, contrasted
against a lush green tree line. The horse is presented in a foreshortened perspective, showing
the artist’s mastery in portraying depth. The composition is anchored at right with the vertical
line of the building impeding the eye from leaving the canvas with a glance. The boy at left holds
the reins of a bay with a saddle and blanket on the ground. Buildings are seen in the distance.
Faithfulness to Nature 93
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye100
Plate 26
A Bazaar in Damascus, 1856oil on canvas 84 x 64 inches Collection of Bethany College, Bethany, WV
In July 1856 Keene Richards wrote a letter to the Spirit of the Times describing the figures
in the Bazaar in Damascus:
In this painting all of the Eastern costumes are introduced; Bedouins, with graceful abbas [long garment] and rich keffiahs [head scarves], the Turk and Turkish soldier, a Syrian Priest, the veiled women with their everlasting white gowns and yellow morocco boots, the magnificently dressed Albanian [sic] officer on horseback, and lastly the merchants sitting in theirs stalls in various attitudes… These, with other figures, make up a picture without confusion, and so true to nature that I shall never behold it without feeling myself trans-ported to the spot.75
Faithfulness to Nature 101
Coming Home Series: Edward Troye132
Faithfulness to Nature 133
Plate 38
Waverly, 1872oil on canvas25 x 30 inchesCollection of Lawrence and Rene Kurzius
The last known painting by Troye was completed in September 1872, two years before he
died. The portrait of the brown stallion Waverly, by imported Australian, out of imported Cicily
Jopson, was commissioned by owner James A. Grimstead of “Walnut Hill Stud” in Lexington,
Kentucky. Depicted in a landscape that is much more fully defined than many of Troye’s com-
positions, to one side of Waverly is a group of horses, two frolicking; to the right are a stable and
tree balancing the composition. Mackay-Smith wrote, “It was characteristic of the artist that
only after the completion of a masterpiece was he content to put down his palette and brushes
and to end his career as an artist.”97