1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Troy, Jean François de

TROY, JEAN FRANCOIS DE (1679-1752), French painter, was born at Paris in 1679. He received his first lessons from his father, himself a skilful portrait painter, who afterwards sent his son to Italy. There his amusements occupied him fully as much as his studies; but his ability was such that on his return he was at once made an official of the Academy, and obtained a large number of orders for the decoration of public and private buildings, executing at the same time a quantity of easel pictures of very unequal merit. Amongst the most considerable of his works are thirty-six compositions painted for the hotel of De Live (1729), and a series of the story of Esther, designed for the Gobelins whilst De Troy was director of the school of France at Rome (1738-1751)—a post which he resigned in a fit of irritation at court neglect. He did not expect to be taken at his word, and was about to return to France when he died on the 24th of January 1752. The life-size painting (Louvre) of the “First Chapter of the Order of the Holy Ghost held by Henry IV.,” in the church of the Grands Augustins, is one of his most complete performances, and his dramatic composition, the “Plague at Marseilles,” is widely known through the excellent engraving of Thomassin. The Cochins, father and son, Fessard, Galimard, Bauvarlet, Herisset, and the painters Boucher and Parrocel, have engraved and etched the works of De Troy.