Henri-Édouard TRUCHOT (1798–1822) - Prayer to the Virgin in a ruined church

Henri-Édouard TRUCHOT
(Blieskastel, 1798 - ?, 1822)

Prayer to the Virgin in a ruined church

Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower left
40.5 x 32.5 cm
1821

Henri-Édouard Truchot was born on May 3, 1798 in Blieskastel (formerly Castres in French) in the Saar region then under French domination. His parents predestined the future artist for an office career. He was admitted from the age of thirteen and a half into the services of the Journal de l’Enregistrement; At seventeen, he moved to the administration of the Garde-Meuble, where he joined his father as a bookkeeper. This job having been abolished in 1815, this abolition resulted in the dismissal of the father and son.
It was during this time that his father met the painter Charles-Marie Bouton, who then decided to train the budding artist, first in drawing, then following successful trials, in painting. It was only in the course of 1817 that Truchot really took the palette and two years later he exhibited no less than five paintings for his debut at the Paris Salon. He stood out for the vigor of his colors, the firmness of his touch and the grandiose and picturesque effect of the whole. The Salon of 1822, with eight paintings on display, only confirmed the hopes of a talent so precocious and already so formed.
Truchot had the opportunity to visit England and took from it two paintings of Canterbury Cathedral which were exhibited at the Salon of 1822. This trip will unfortunately be fatal to him, he caught a chest ailment from which he did not recover and died. August 18, 1822.
Posthumously, a final painting was exhibited in 1824 representing A View of the Church of Mont-Saint-Michel.

Truchot worked for the Duke of Orleans (since Louis-Philippe) who had no less than four paintings in his personal collection. According to the Salon booklets, other great names of the time also collected his works such as the Opera dancer Émilie Bigottini (two paintings), the Marquise de Lauriston (two paintings), Alexandre Du Sommerard (at the origin of the foundation of the current Cluny museum), or of the Comte d'Houdetot (peer of France).
Likewise, the Duchess of Berry, the art dealer Alphonse Giroux, the painter Louis Daguerre, the collectors Antoine Valedau (important donor of the Fabre museum in Montpellier) and the knight Féréol Bonnemaison also fell in love with his works.

Truchot painted, with a few exceptions, architectural subjects, feudal castles, interiors of cloisters and churches. Xavier Leprince, who was his friend, sometimes produced the figures in his paintings as can be seen from the descriptions of the paintings exhibited at the Paris Salons of 1822 and 1824.

The obituary of Xavier Leprince, himself deceased young and on the rise in 1826 - says a lot about the fame that Truchot was beginning to enjoy:
The already numerous list of distinguished young painters stricken with premature death in recent years has grown even further. The loss of Cauchereau, Michallon, Pagnest, Géricault, Léon Pallière, Louis Gudin, Truchot, etc., succeeds that of young Leprince, victim at the age of twenty-six, of a breast disease which took him away in a few months.

Museums: Chaumont, Cherbourg, Montpellier, Paris (Mus. De Cluny)…