page_title: 20 Frith Street
section_title: Jean Baptiste Troye
hierarchical_section_title: 20 Frith Street / History / Jean Baptiste Troye
caption_attribution_description: English: Edward Troye (1808-1874), French-American painter of horses. Copyprint of a portrait of Troye from a daguerreotype.
context_page_description: 20 Frith Street is a building in the Soho district of London. It is located on the east side of Frith Street, close to the junction with Old Compton Street. The building which currently occupies the site of 20 Frith Street was built in 1858 by William Cooze to replace a house which dated from c1725, which itself may have replaced an even earlier building.
  When the house was built in around 1725 there were fewer houses in the street, because the north end was taken up by Monmouth House. At the time, the grounds of Monmouth House extended from the south side of Soho Square to Queen Street; and so during some of the eighteenth century the house's address was 15 Thrift Street. The most famous inhabitant at this address was Wolfgang Mozart, who lived there aged eight from September 1764 during his grand tour of Europe with his father and his sister.
  The site gained its current address of No. 20 Frith Street some time after 1773 when Monmouth House was pulled down, and more houses began to be built on its former grounds at the north end of the street.
context_section_description: The miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Troye exhibited dioramas (scale models of landscapes) at No. 20 in the early 1800s. His exhibitions consisted of "the most beautiful models and reliefs of countries, cities, mountains, &c. celebrated either for natural beauty or historical occurrences associated with them."
  Troye was the pupil or (assistant) of the geologist and chemist Charles-François Exchaquet, who made the first accurate relief models (in wood) of the Mont Blanc chain, a part of Valais and the St. Gotthard group. A model of Mont Blanc which is (or was) in the possession of the Swiss Alpine Club may partly be Troye's work.
  Exchacquet's models, like Troye's, were realistically painted with glaciers made of spath (i.e. spar) and the models were about 1.40m x 40 cm (about 4' 6" by 1' 6"). One of Exchaquet's models still existed in 1920, having been presented to the museum of Görlitz by Baron de Gersdorf. (Baron von Gersdorff from Saxony, possibly?). Gersdorf authenticated the first ascent of Mont Blanc by Jacques Balmat and physician Michel-Gabriel Paccard in 1786. Exchaquet was also the director of mines and foundries at Servoz in Haut-Faucigny, where attempts were made to emulate the success of the English steel-makers who, however, were using the very best imported Swedish Oregrounds iron.
  In 1816 Troye co-authored with one S. Glover A Description of the Inundation of the Valley of Bagnes in Swisserland. [sic] Troye published an account of Mont Blanc and his models in 1819. 
   There is a picture of either Troye's or Exchaquet's highly detailed work in Seylaz 1935, p. 193.
  There is a fine plaster medallion of William Thomas Brande, attributed to J. B. Troye c1820, in the National Portrait Gallery.
  Jean Baptiste Troye's son was the artist Edward Troye, America's foremost 19th-century horse painter, whose influences were George Stubbs and John Sartorius. Born in Lausanne in 1808, he studied art in England for a number of years before moving to the United States.
   1820
  A bookseller, Thomas King junior, lived at No. 20 from 1820 to 1822
  John Green, aged 16, was found guilty in October 1820, of stealing 15 lbs. of lead, value 8s., the goods of Thomas Matthews Redaway, and fixed to a certain dwelling-house of his. No. 20, Frith-street, Soho. He was transported for seven years.
  A certain felon named John Green was transported to Australia on board the Morley and arrived in Newcastle, New South Wales on the Elizabeth Henrietta on 14 March 1821.
   
  1827–1839
  Frederick Rothenburg, late of No, 20, Frith-Street appeared on 13 July 1827 at the Court for Relief of Insolvent Debtors, Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, as did Augustus Armand, formerly of No. 20, Frith-Street, assistant to a Jeweller, on 13 November. In 1828 John Pike and James Clark upholders and furniture warehousemen were insured by the Sun Fire Office (now RSA Insurance Group) as was William Landon, gent., in 1830. A fire started "at 9½ p.m." on 18 September 1839 next door at No. 19, a bookbinder's. The back workshops were burned out and three adjoining buildings were damaged.
caption: Edward Troye, J. B. Troye's son
exif: {"Image Orientation": "0", "Image XResolution": "400", "Image YResolution": "400", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:11:10 14:13:51", "Image ExifOffset": "146", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "328", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5600", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1263", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1579", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "be85212c2fad9259f6afcd3711be7e0f"}