Une faneuse
Peasant Woman Leaning on a Hayfork
Dupré’s understanding and appreciation of the hard physical labor involved in rural life is apparent in this canvas. The weariness of her pose and her dirty hands speak of the grueling nature of her work; and the patched and mended clothing suggest that the wages for this effort are meagre. Yet, the monumentality of the…
Read MoreHarvester’s Rest
Harvesters Rest is one of three paintings in a small group on this theme from the early 1880s. (R1001, R1003) In this canvas, there are three figures: the same woman who appears in the other two paintings, and both the mustachioed man from the first painting (R1001) and the bearded man from the 1882 painting…
Read MoreFemme versant à boire
The theme of farm workers resting recurs throughout Dupré’s oeuvre, but this painting forms part of a group of three canvases with similar compositions—and its date of 1882 anchors the group in the early 1880s. This image presents a particularly intimate scene of two haymakers enjoying a respite from their labors. Unlike the slightly earlier…
Read MoreLe repos dans les champs
Le repos dans les champs was one of two paintings that Dupré exhibited at the Salon of 1887. Although the work is not especially large, it demonstrates the artist’s ability to handle complex, multi-figure compositions, as would be appropriate for a Salon submission. The pyramidal organization of the figures, with the man in the straw…
Read MoreRepos des faneurs
The scene of two harvesters eating lunch in the fields became a theme that Dupré explored often in the early 1880s. This is the first of several paintings from this period that utilizes a similar composition and in fact, the same models. (See R1003, R1004.) In this version, a woman sits on some baled hay…
Read MoreA Moments Rest
This painting is one of a series of images featuring a solitary female figure gazing off into the distance that begin to appear in Dupré’s work in the late 1880s. In this canvas, the woman leaning on her hayfork stares at a point outside the picture plane, leaving the viewer unaware of the focus of…
Read MoreA Landscape
A Wooded Landscape with a Woman by a Haystack
One of the earliest signed and dated works by Dupré, this bucolic landscape shows a clear influence of the Impressionist painters whose first independent group exhibition had opened in April 1874, just a few months before he painted this July scene. The young painter would surely have seen the exhibit that not only challenged the…
Read MoreWinter Landscape, Nauroy
The small village of Nauroy (Aisne department in Hauts-de-France) is located about ten miles north of Saint-Quentin in the region known as Picardie during Dupre’s time. It was here that Dupré first began to paint scenes of rural life while visiting his good friend Georges Laugée. After his marriage to Georges’ sister Marie-Eléonore, family visits…
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