Paul-Désiré Trouillebert

Biography of Paul-Désiré Trouillebert ( 1829-1900 )

A painter of genre, landscapes and nudes, Paul-Désiré Trouillebert was born in Paris in 1829. He studied with Ernest Hébert and Charles François Jalabert at the School of Fine Arts in Paris.

Trouillebert was first noticed for his portraits and his nudes: the portrait of "Mademoiselle A." allowed him to be accepted at the Salon of French Artists in 1865, where he exhibited until 1884. He exhibited his first landscape, "Au bois Rossignolet", in 1869. His style was refined and vaporous, like the work of his friend and disciple Jean-Baptiste Corot.

Landscapes constituted the majority of his painted work. An independent artist, Trouillebert travelled and drew inspiration from the French regions he crossed: Brittany, Sarthe, Limousin, the Loire and the banks of the Seine. Passionate about fishing, Trouillebert represented fishermen in Brittany and Normandy and fishermen on the banks of rivers.

The works of Trouillebert were remarkable by their light touch and the way he was working on the effects of light on the landscape at different times of the day. About an exhibition of his works, a critic wrote: "One of the secrets of Trouillebert is to reproduce nature as it is, with a poetic touch that gives an impression of a rare truth; looking at his canvases, one can feel the trees shivering in the open air, and the nature is full of the bright light of the infinite countryside."

The painter worked between his studios in Paris and Candes and made several fluvial landscapes in his workshop-boat, between Saint-Germain-sur-Vienne, Montsoreau and Candes.