Jules Dupré

Jules Dupré (1811-1889), French painter of the Barbizon school, a founder of modern French landscape painting. He was born in Nantes, the son of a porcelain manufacturer. Settling in Paris, he was influenced by 17th-century Dutch landscape paintings in the Louvre, by the early 19th-century English landscapist John Constable, and by the leading Barbizon landscapist Théodore Rousseau. Dupré's work expresses the brooding, dramatic aspects of nature. In his later works, the vivid, sharply contrasting colors are applied in thick impasto. Examples are Evening (Louvre, Paris) and River Scene (Tate Gallery, London).