1 of

You are browsing the full text of the article: Jules Dupré

 

 

Click here to go back to the list of articles for Issue: Volume: 1 of The Art Review

 

The Art Review  Volume 1   Issue: 1  January 1890  Page: 11
 
 Jules Dupré By Julia M. Ady
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Dupré, Jules [1811-1889. France. Painter]
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
the fashion to talk vaguely of him as 10,000 years old, and the work of the fabulous ‘followers of Horus’ Truth to tell, he is but a feeble-looking beast in his present condition, — little more impressive than the ‘Toad Rock’ near Tunbridge Wells.

There is no earthly reason for thinking him particularly ancient. The famous stele which pretends to be contemporary with Khufu is late, and its mention of the Sphinx is of no historic value whatever. As Mr. Petrie says, the Sphinx is an Asiatic idea, and was not heard of in Egypt before the twelfth dynasty. Similarly the carving of the living rock into monumental forms did not take any considerable development till the time of the new Empire. The tradition that connects the name of Thothmes III with this ruined monument is probably deserving of more respect than it has received in recent years.

W. M. Conway.


JULES DUPRÉ

ON the 6th October 1889, while the turmoil of the Exhibition was at its height in Paris, the re died Jules Dupré, the doyen of French landscape painting, the last survivor of the school of 1830. As lately as 1883 he sent eight pictures to the Triennial Exhibition, and only a few weeks before his death his name appeared in the papers among the artists who received the médaille d’honneur at the Exposition Universelle. But his achievements belong to the record of a past generation, and his death recalls the struggles of other days. The friend and comrade of Rousseau, of Corot, and of Diaz and Daubigny, he bore his part in the battle which ended in the victory of the new ideas, and left the men of 1830 in possession of the field. Alone among them all he has lived to see the fulness of their triumph, and to hear the school of landscape painting to which he belonged hailed on all sides as the crowning glory of the art of the century. Jules Dupré was the son of a potter. Born at Nantes in 1811, he spent his early years in a porcelain manufactory managed by his father at L'Isle-Adam, a village in the department of Oise, twenty miles to the north of Paris. All his life he retained his love for his old home, and was fond of saying that the scenery on the banks of Oise and the forest of Compiegne had made a landscape-painter of him. He began by painting china in his father’s factory, and decorating clock-cases with Alpine scenes, but soon tired of this kind of work, and came to Paris, where he entered the studio of Diebold. Like Millet, he learnt more from the mornings which he spent in the Louvre than from any master. The study of the great Dutch painters, the sight of the Ruysdaels, the Hobbemas, and, above all, of Constable’s landscapes, made a deep impression upon his young mind.

The moment was an eventful one in the history of art. The long apathy engendered by the reign of classicism was over. People had grown weary of the formal pedantry that had reduced landscape art to cold conventionalism. Everywhere new dreams and new hopes were stirring. The exhibition of English pictures, and among them of Constable’s ‘Hay-Wain’, in Paris in 1824, had worked an unexpected revolution, and had given what M. Paul Mantz terms the death blow to academic landscape. The effect produced upon these few young artists was extraordinary. Corot saw them, and said the scales had fallen from his eyes. Paul Huet went away sorely troubled in mind to ponder over the new ideal here revealed to him. And the boy Rousseau became aware of the passionate sympathy with nature within him, and awoke to the consciousness of his power to put it upon canvas. Young Dupré felt the same impulse, and, as soon as he had earned a little money, left Paris to spend the summer in the forest of Compiègne, impelled by the conviction that no art was worthy of the name which had not been grounded on a close study of nature. The first results of his labours appeared in the Salon of 1831, where he made his debut, and no less than three landscapes bore his signature. That was the famous Salon where Diaz, who had also begun life as a porcelain-painter in the factory of Dupré’s uncle, had his first picture, and Theodore Rousseau won the applause of his fellow-artists by his Auvergne landscape. Born a year after Dupré, Rousseau was only nineteen, but his genius already made him the recognised leader of the little group. In the evenings they met at an estaminet of the Faubourg St. Denis, which Decamps and the other Romanticists frequented, and the re discussed art and life. The material prospects of the young painters were not by any means brilliant. Most of them were dependent for daily bread on their own exertions, and, as they were soon to learn, the tide of public opinion was slowly but surely setting against them. The Classicists were beginning to realise how fatal to their position the propagation of the new ideas was to prove, and prepared themselves for stout resistance. At first Dupré was more fortunate than his companions. One of the first pictures which he exhibited was bought by the Due de Nemours, and in 1833 he and Corot were both awarded second-class medals. Then the fury of the storm burst. In the Salon of 1835 Jules Dupré exhibited two important works — the ‘Pacage Limousin’ and ‘Environs de Southampton’ — which lately figured among the chef-d’oeuvres of the school of Barbizon in the Centennial Exhibition at the Champ de Mars. Both were landscapes of the finest order, admirably composed and
The Art Review  Volume 1   Issue: 1  January 1890  Page: 12
 
 Jules Dupré By Julia M. Ady
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
carefully executed. In both the sincerity of the painter is evident. We feel his determination to be true to his own impressions, to put on record what he himself sees and feels rather than what others have seen and felt before him. He is not afraid to paint the green grass of the meadow, the storm-clouds, and wind-swept bushes of the marshy ground as they are in nature. At the same time, by knowledge of effect and chiaroscuro, he harmonises everything. Many of his works are richer in tone, but here we have a robustness of thought, a power and energy in the composition, which impress us as they impressed the painter's contemporaries. No wonder people were startled, and became conscious of the presence of a new and disturbing element in their midst. The men of the ancient régime felt these innovations must be put down with a strong hand if the old order were to be maintained and academical art were to keep the field. Accordingly the following year the official jury, with Bidault as their president, combined to keep out the men of the new school. During thirteen years the landscapes of Rousseau — those pictures which command the highest prices and are the joy and wonder of every lover of nature — were refused admission to the yearly exhibition, and a talent the most incontestable ever known was, in the words of Edmond About, contested on every side. Dupré’s pictures before long shared the same fate, although the hostility was less personal in his case than in that of his more illustrious friend. But he, too, had an uphill path to climb, and the re were days when he knew not where to turn in order to meet the demands of his creditors. At one time, M. Albert Wolff tells us, he owed forty thousand francs — a debt which seemed to him insurmountable. In his distress he applied to a picture-seller. The man recognised his talent, and told him that he was ready and willing to give him an order on a large scale, on condition that Dupré would modify his style to suit the popular taste. His art, as the shrewd vendor of pictures expressed it, was not sufficiently amiable to carry favour with the multitude. Let him give up painting these rainy skies and common everyday scenes of riverbanks and forest-trees and green pastures, and instead give us the classic temples and azure lakes of Italian landscape: then all would be well, and the re would be no need for the artist to vex his soul with petty cares. But Jules Dupré was not the man to stoop to such a compromise. He painted what he saw and felt, and his artistic conscience was too unbending to permit him to change his style even to pay his debts.

Fortunately for Dupré, there were some picture-lovers who thought differently, or at least saw the merit of his loving and patient transcripts of natural beauty. Certain it is that he managed to sell his pictures — far below their present value, it is true, but still in such a manner as to earn his own living and find himself in a position to help others. His generosity towards his brother artists who were in worse straits than himself is well known. He helped Constant Troyon, the famous animal painter, who began by painting china in his early struggles, and gave him the benefit of his advice and example. The elder master’s influence is strongly felt in Troyon’s earlier landscapes, and does not pass unnoticed in ‘La Vailee de La Tonque’ or ‘Le Paturage en Normandie’. But it was Rousseau on whose behalf he exerted himself the most strenuously. Many a time this loyal friend tramped the streets of Paris in the vain endeavour to sell the despised works of him who has been called le Grand Refuse. On one occasion, after several further attempts he succeeded in persuading the great opera-singer Baroilhet to give five hundred francs for a work by Rousseau. That work was the famous winter landscape known as ‘Le Givre’, a picture which has been often described. Twenty years after Baroilhet sold the same picture again for 17,000 francs, upon which Dupré, happening to meet the singer, at the time remarked that he had made a good bargain; upon which Baroilhet replied, with a smile, that he had his own good taste to thank, for when he bought the picture the re was not another on the pavements of Paris who would have given five hundred francs for it! This was only one of countless services rendered by Dupré to the illustrious friend whose superiority to himself as a painter he was always the first to recognise. Rousseau had a studio next door to Dupré in the Place Pigalle, and spent many summer months at L’lsle-Adam, as his lovely pictures of ‘Les Bords de l’Oise’ bear witness. This close connection between the two men was of great advantage to both; and if Dupré owes the splendour of his colouring in a measure to Rousseau, the re can be no doubt that his way of interpreting nature had an important share in the development of Rousseau’s style. Rousseau on his part did not always requite the generous kindness of his friend as he deserved. His temper, embittered by long injustice, sometimes broke out into unreasonable fits of anger; and when in 1849 Dupré was decorated with the Legion of Honour while he only secured a first-class medal, his disappointment showed itself in moody resentment for some time, and he remained estranged from the man who had been his truest friend. Fortunately Dupré was not the man to bear him a grudge, and to the end spoke of Rousseau with the greatest respect and admiration as ‘the chief’, who, in the words of their mutual friend and brother artist Diaz, ‘had led them all to victory’.

When the reaction set in, Dupré had his share in the triumph of the movement, and was consoled for the long neglect which he, in common with his friends, had experienced. The political Revolution of 1848 freed French art from tyranny. The old jury was abolished, and the Salon once more opened its doors to the works of Rousseau and Dupré. In 1849 he and Troyon were decorated together by Louis Napoleon as President of the Republic, and twenty-one years later he received his promotion to the coveted rank of
The Art Review  Volume 1   Issue: 1  January 1890  Page: -
 
 Jules Dupré By Julia M. Ady
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Dupré, Jules [1811-1889. France. Painter]
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
The Art Review  Volume 1   Issue: 1  January 1890  Page: 13
 
 Jules Dupré By Julia M. Ady
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
Officer of the Legion of Honour. At the Exposition Universelle of 1867; twelve of his finest landscapes were brought together, and in the Exhibition which has just closed its doors the same number of oil-paintings by his hand, as well as five characteristic drawings, hung on the walls. Meanwhile his works, in common with those of Corot, of Rousseau, of Millet, and of Daubigny, had risen enormously in public estimation, and the canvases which he sold for a few hundred francs forty years ago now command their tens of thousands. The ‘Environs de Southampton’ painted by him, let it be remembered, at four-and-twenty, sold in 1873 for £1,680; while last summer a small but very fine ‘Bords de Rivière’ brought in the same amount at the Secrétan sale. Many of his finest works have been exhibited at one time or another in England, where he has occasionally sought his subjects. In America they are still more highly appreciated.

But through good and evil days alike Jules Dupre retained the same proud and independent spirit. He troubled himself little about selling his works, and he shared Daubigny’s openly avowed opinion that ‘the best pictures are those which do not sell’. As for painting to order, or suiting his style to please his customers, or increase his popularity, he was as little likely to stoop to this as he had been in the days of his poverty. So distasteful to him, indeed, were the intrigues of the Salon and the tricks and methods by which some men rise to fame, that for many years he refused to exhibit, and at all times held aloof from Parisian society. His isolation has been sometimes spoken of as ‘sauvagerie’ but the few cultivated friends who, during the last years of his life, were privileged visitors to his country home at L'Isle-Adam, have given us pleasant glimpses of the veteran painter. Twenty years ago this charming spot on the banks of the Oise had become another Barbizon. There Daubigny, when he had become famous, painted the river scenery from his floating studio on the Oise. A little further off he built himself that beautiful country-house which Corot and Diaz decorated for him, and where they were frequent visitors. In his retreat at L'Isle-Adam Dupré enjoyed the company of these artist-friends and the rural scenes where his youth had been spent. There he would take long rambles by the Oise, or in the forest of Compiegne, which was the Fontainebleau of his Barbizon. Surrounded by the members of his family and a few intimate friends, he cared nothing for politics and little for fame, but lived apart from the great world.

To the end his mind kept its freshness, and he loved to show the friends who came from Paris his familiar haunts, and to entertain them by frequent quotations from his favourite authors. One by one these friends of his youth went from him: first, poor Rousseau, worn before his time by cares; then, in the same year, Corot and Millet, and after that Diaz. The younger men, Troyon and Daubigny, had gone before, and still he who had led the van remained a patriarchal figure in his long white head and flowing locks. One day last autumn the pictures which bore his name in the Great Exhibition were draped in black, and Paris learnt that Jules Dupré, the last of the heroes of 1830, was dead.

The immense services which Dupré rendered to his leader, and the subordinate part which he himself played in the movement, must not blind our eyes to his own merits as a painter. Whatever may be the exact place in the Barbizon group which may hereafter be assigned to him, he must rank high among the idyllic painters of the century. On the whole we are inclined to think his place is in the second rank, a little below Daubigny perhaps, and above Diaz. But no one who knows his landscapes of Le Limousin and Le Correze, of Artois and Berri, of the Landes and the forest of Compiegne, will deny the rare charm and originality of his work. Now and then he reminds us of Constable, more often perhaps of Ruysdael and Hobbema, only that the re is a distinctly modern and personal note in his rendering of natural fact which is absent from the pictures of the great Dutchmen.

Jules Dupré is above all things a painter of what has been termed 'paysage intime'. In him, as in Millet and Daubigny, we are constantly reminded of the strong affinity which exists between these painters and ourselves. Not only is this scenery of the north-west of France practically the same as that of our southern counties: the silver streak which parts the two countries does not alter the close resemblance that exists in the general features of the landscape on either shore. The rugged coast and green pastures of Normandy, the willows along the banks of the smooth-flowing river, and the lanes winding up the hillside might belong to Kent or Sussex. But, more than this, in the work of these masters we are conscious of a depth of poetry and a solemn seriousness of purpose which is the heritage of men born under Northern skies. And in Dupré's work this strain is the more remarkable because he often painted English scenery, and our rain-laden skies and rich meadows had especial attractions for him. The love of the sea, again, is another feature which proves Dupré's kinship with the men of our race. He paints the Channel seas and Breton coasts in all their varied aspects, and gives us in turn the craft of the fishermen sleeping in the still moonlight on the summer sea, and the ship walking the waters as a thing of life; but best of all he loves the stormy evening when the wind chases the flying scud across the sky and the white sea-horses ride upon the waves. These pictures of open sea are among Dupré's finest creations, and show us his powers of draughtmanship and knowledge of effect at their highest point. His colour is often magnificent, especially in the landscapes of his middle period. Such pictures as ‘La Meridienne’, formerly in the Laurent-Richard collection, and ‘Les