‘To Market to Market…’ and Risk for Global Disease

“...[T]he sound of water escaping from mill-dams... old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brick work, I love such things.... As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight,” wrote John Constable (1776–1837), English landscape painter and source of inspiration for Constant Troyon and others, who looked for subjects not in the classical or academic tradition but in natural surroundings (1). Bucolic farms, rivers, trees, animals, and the common people populated 19th-century French painting as fi elds, streams, and rural life seemed palatable alternatives to the ravages of industrial development. Artists, among them Charles-François Daubigny, Théodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré, Narciso Diaz del la Peña, rejecting the urban scene, migrated to the countryside south of Paris, near Fontainebleau Forest, to live and work in the small village of Barbizon. There, eschewing modernity and its unwelcome transformations, they sought their own style and in the process laid the foundation for realism and, later, impressionism (2). The Barbizon school, as these artists became known, took the studio outdoors, in plein air, where the landscape ceased to be just the backdrop of classical or historical scenes and became a subject in its own right. And, recalling 17th-century Dutch traditions, it contained animals and peasant farmers engaged in everyday activities. Among the fi rst Barbizon artists to become successful, Troyon became known as one of the best animal painters of his time. A native of Sèrves, he learned painting at the porcelain manufactory, where his father and grandfather were painters. Porcelain painting served him well, not for its exacting technique and judicious use of color alone but as back-up whenever he needed support to travel with other landscapists (Louis Cabat, Camille Roqueplan) and to paint the countryside around Sèrves and farming landscapes of Brittany and Normandy. In the 1830s, Troyon started exhibiting in the Salon, where his landscapes attracted much attention among experts and the public. He was able to travel to Holland and see the masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age. Inspired by works of Aelbert Cuyp, Esaias van de Velde, and Paulus Potter, he became more and more interested in painting animals: sheep fl ocks on country roads, oxen in plowing scenes. In his paintings, often large and imposing, landscapes were identifi ed by the animals they sustained: Normandy by dairy cows grazing the lowlands, Fontainebleau by hunting dogs, recalling royal hunting parties at a nearby chateau (3). These tranquil landscapes, painted in a casual unaffected style, gained him popularity abroad. Some of Troyon’s later works, among them On the Way to the Market, on this month’s cover, were recognized masterpieces. He was decorated with the Legion of Honor and counted Napoleon III as his patron. His last exhibit in