A Break from the Harvest

man and woman eating in the field

Harvesters seated on hay stacks enjoying their meal is a recurring theme. The models who posed for these images reappear consistently throughout Dupré’s compositions of this subject. Presumably they were either members of the Dupré-Laugée extended family or local people who were willing to pose for the painter. Here, the standing man with the mustache…

Read More

La glaneuse

woman with rake in the field

The solitary figure of a woman standing in a meadow in this painting differs slightly from other canvases with similar images in that there are no background features such as livestock, haystacks or distant buildings. She grasps a hayfork, but there is no hay field visible nearby, nor are there any other indications of either…

Read More

Le ballon

Le Ballon - Julien Dupre

Dupré’s large Salon painting, The Balloon (Le ballon), takes the subject of hot air balloon flight as the focal point of his narrative. Although not a typical theme in French painting, the subject was nevertheless popular in the nineteenth century. France was home to the inventors of the hot air balloon, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810) and…

Read More

Le troupeau d’oies

Children Feeding Geese - Julien Dupre

Children Feeding Geese is listed as Le troupe d’oies (A Flock of Geese) in Dupré’s account book (no. #32) in 1881. When he sold it to Michel Knoedler that same year, the art dealer listed it as Gardeuse d’oies (Goose Girl) in his stock book.¹ As the painting made its way to the United States,…

Read More