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for JULES DUPRE
JULES DUPRE
1811-1889
(b Nantes, 5 April 1811; d L'Isle-Adam, Val-d'Oise, 6 Oct 1889).
French painter. He began his career in Creil, Ile de France, as a decorator of porcelain in the factory of his father, François Dupré (b 1781), and later worked at the factory founded by his father in Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, Limousin. It was in this region of central France that Dupré became enchanted by the beauty of nature. He went to Paris to study under the landscape painter Jean-Michel Diébolt (b 1779), who had been a pupil of Jean-Louis Demarne. Dupré began to see nature with a new awareness of its moods, preferring to paint alone and en plein air. He was fascinated by bad weather, changes of light and sunsets. Many of his paintings depict quiet woodland glades, often with a pond or stream (e.g. Plateau of Bellecroix, 1830; Cincinnati, OH, A. Mus.; for illustration see Barbizon school). In 1830-31 he associated with other young landscape painters, including Louis Cabat, Constant Troyon and Théodore Rousseau, and with them sought inspiration for his study of nature in the provinces, exhibiting the finished paintings at the annual Salons. Although he was a member of the Barbizon school, he did not visit the Forest of Fontainebleau as frequently as did others of the group, preferring instead to settle in 1849 in the village of L'Isle-Adam, north of Paris, where he remained for much of his life.
Dupré's approach to nature falls somewhere between realism and Romanticism. For him nature was majestic, and he was fascinated by the alliance of the ephemeral and the eternal. He searched for the mystery of creation by examining the permanence of a natural world dominated by trees, which he saw as a significant element linking heaven and earth. This mystical vision was in part influenced by the paintings of such 17th-century Dutch masters as Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael. One of his most representative works is The Floodgate (c. 1855-60; Paris, Mus. d'Orsay), with its tormented conception expressed in shifting chiaroscuro and thick, powerful handling of paint, which shape the natural world of light, trees and plants supporting human beings and animals. Despite his independent temperament, his career was successful, and his work was received with enthusiasm during his lifetime.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bellier de La Chavignerie-Auvray
L. Delteil: J. F. Millet, Th. Rousseau, Jules Dupré, J. Barthold Jongkind, i of Le Peintre-graveur illustré (XIXe et XXe siècles) (Paris, 1906-30/R New York, 1969)
M. M. Aubrun: Jules Dupré, 1811-1889: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé, 2 vols (Paris, 1974-82)
M. Laclotte and J.-P. Cuzin, eds: Petit Larousse de la peinture, 2 vols (Paris, 1979)
ANNIE SCOTTEZ-DE WAMBRECHIES
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