J. DUPRÉ
Jules Dupré (1811–1889) began, like Troyon, as a china-painter, and, like Rousseau, with whom he was for years on terms of intimate friendship, benefited by the example of Constable, whose art he had presumably occasion to study during a visit to England. It was from him that he acquired the sense of movement in nature, which is so much more pronounced in his landscapes than in Rousseau’s, whom he exceeded in breadth of touch and in power. More particularly in his later manner he loved to apply his colours in a thick impasto laid on to every part of the canvas, including the sky. Only on rare occasions did he adopt the more fluid, suave manner shown in Morning (No. 2940) and Evening (No. 2941), the two decorative panels executed for Prince Demidoff, and acquired by the Louvre in 1880 at the San Donato sale. More typical of his virile, forceful style are the twelve signed pictures by Dupré in the Thomy Thiéry Bequest (Nos. 2864–2875), especially the fine autumn landscape The Pond (No. 2867, [Plate L.]), the intensely sad, sunless Flock in the Landes (No. 2871), The Large Oak (No. 2873), and The Sunset on a Marsh (No. 2874), with the golden glow of the sky reflected in the water.
Before turning to Diaz, who has been aptly called “the most romantic of the Romanticists,” we must briefly mention Eugène Isabey (1804–1886), who connects the art of the First Empire with Romanticism, and who knew how to invest his historical paintings with genuinely pictorial interest at a time when that class of subject was generally treated from the literary and anecdotal point of view. His exuberant temperament led him not infrequently to exaggerated movement. The twelve pictures which bear his signature at the Louvre (Nos. 2878–2884, 2953–2956, and 2953a) are illustrative of every phase of his art. As a landscape painter he may be considered a forerunner of Rousseau.