Realism in France

Constant Troyon

Oxen Going to Work, Morning Effect

1855

Oil on canvas, 262 × 391 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris (on deposit from the Louvre)

Oxen head out to plow at sunrise, painted on a canvas nearly four meters wide.

• The State commissioned it in 1854 and showed it at the 1855 Exposition Universelle.
• Look at the low sun behind the team and the long shadows thrown toward the viewer.
• A farm-animal subject on a canvas nearly four meters wide, at the scale of history painting.

History painting

large pictures of history, religion or myth, ranked highest by the academies.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain