The National Sporting Library and Museum (NSLM) in Middleburg, Virginia has mounted a comprehensive exhibit in two parts: the paintings of Edward Troye and the archives of his biographers, Harry Worcester Smith and Alexander Mackay-Smith. The paintings (on view in the Museum) and the archives (exhibited in the Library) may now be seen through March 29, 2015.
Troye played an important role not only in American art but also in preserving the images of leading American Thoroughbreds of the nineteenth century. Highlights of the exhibit include many of Troye’s most recognized portrayals of important racehorses, jockeys, and trainers of the antebellum period.
American Eclipse by Edward Troye
Sportsman Harry Worcester Smith (1864–1945) and author Alexander Mackay-Smith (1903–1998), whose combined active lives overlapped to span more than a century (and virtually all of the twentieth century), were the two men most responsible for casting a broad light on Troye’s importance to the American sporting art world in their time, and solidifying Troye’s place in American art history. Mackay-Smith, of course, was a founder of the National Sporting Library as well, and was a guiding influence of the institution for more than forty years.
Harry Worcester Smith researched and collected important records and information about Troye and his work and was, until his death, recognized as an authority on Troye. Mackay-Smith followed up with his own research and scholarship and published, in 1981, his definitive work on Troye, The Race Horses of America, 1832–1872, Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye. According to NSLM’s John H. Daniels Research Fellow Martha Wolfe, Mackay-Smith’s book, “more than thirty years after its publication, is still considered the definitive text on Edward Troye.”
Claudia Pfeiffer, the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator of Art at NSLM used Mackay-Smith’s book as a guide to bring together forty-two paintings and sketches for the exhibition, Faithfulness to Nature: Paintings by Edward Troye, with the advice of NSLM Museum Exhibitions and Collections Committee Chair F. Turner Reuter, Jr. An impressive list of private and public lenders contributed to the exhibition, including: The Jockey Club, NY; Bethany College, WV; Yale University Art Gallery, CT; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Pebble Hill Plantation, GA; and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, NY.
The Museum exhibition explores the artist’s place within American art history and his important role in creating visual documentation of the development of American Thoroughbred bloodlines and this country’s rich racing heritage and culture. Highlights include many of Troye’s most recognized portrayals of important race horses, jockeys, and trainers active in this country during the antebellum period; the artist’s first known surviving animal drawing; two acclaimed mural-sized paintings, A Bazaar in Damascus, 1856, and Syrian Ploughman, 1856; and his final painting, Waverly, 1872.
Click for more information, including cost of admission and museum hours. A fully-illustrated catalog with essays by Martha Wolfe and Claudia Pfeiffer accompanies the two exhibitions. Click for an excerpt.
Posted November 14, 2015