Jules Dupré

"What man touches, he can become master of, but to paint that sky [French Riviera] without clouds, that well of light, is as hopeless a task as it would be to sound its depths."

"In July, 1841, Th. Rousseau went to Monsoult, on the borders of the Isle-Adam, where Daubigny and Corot often painted, and there with Jules Dupre he painted for several months. His studio was next door to Dupres, whose mother became in some sense head of this artistic community of three, and very quiet and happy the time was found. Several artists visited them, such as Decamps and Barye, and this period of Rousseaus life is marked by great quietness."

"Rousseaus other friend and neighbour [in Barbizon], Jules Dupré, himself an eminent landscape painter of Barbizon, relates the difficulty Rousseau experienced in knowing when his picture was finished, and how he, Dupré, would sometimes take away from the studio some canvas on which Rousseau was labouring too long."

"tells how Dupré saved at least one canvas, Border of the Forest which Rousseau, morbidly critical, was about to injure by over-painting, or destroy altogether, by urging him to turn its face to the wall and give it a long months lease of life. When the month had expired, he [Rousseau] examined it long and searchingly in Dupres presence, finally exclaiming: Well, I am going to sign it; it is finished."

"[Jules Dupré].. ..the Beethoven of landscape!"

"Jules Dupré had hired at four hundred francs a year a working-room in the Abbey of Saint-Pierre, in the midst of the forest of Fontainebleau. He came but rarely to Paris, and then on his friends affairs rather than on his own. It was he who forced Rousseau on the merchants. It was he, too, who peddled the despised works of Millet among a few collectors of his acquaintance, and who divined Troyon and protected him. He always fled the great city; he regained the solitude of the fields which had become a necessity."

"To have that under ones eyes and not paint it is stupid."

"You think then, that I know my profession? Why, my poor fellow; if I had nothing more to find out and to learn I could not paint any longer."

"But not only is Jules Dupré the last survivor of the illustrious group the Barbizon School, he was its precursor. He indicated first in [French] modern art the return to the eternal source of nature. His admiration for these lost comrades is so sincere that he will not allow himself to be called their chief; before posterity they form his equals, but in the past it was he who showed the way."

"Duprés colour is sonorous and resonant; the subjects for which he showed marked preference are dramatic sunset effects and stormy skies and seas. Late in life he changed his style and gained appreciably in largeness of handling and arrived at greater simplicity in his color harmonies. Among his chief works are the Morning and Evening at the Louvre museum."