Chronology

The Dupré family lived in the Ile de France region from at least the eighteenth century. Little is known about Julien Dupré’s great grandparents, but his grandfather, Pierre Paul Balthazar Dupré (ca. 1788-1851) was recorded as the buyer of a house in the village of Villemomble about ten miles east of Paris in 1832. He and his wife, Jeanne Cécile Grignon (ca. 1788-?), settled in the center of the village at Grande rue 17. At the time of this purchase, their son, Jean-Marie-Pierre Dupré, was twenty-three years old.

The house no longer exists, but it was reportedly a three-story structure with a small courtyard and a garden. Georges Laugée, Julien Dupré’s brother-in-law, later painted a small oil sketch of the garden.