
Paul Huet (French, 1803-1869) was a French landscape painter who was greatly influenced by the British landscape painting tradition, which entailed going out into nature and painting from life.
The influence of Constable's English landscapes, which Huet discovered at the 1824 Salon, is highly evident in his work. Anticipating the innovations of the Barbizon School, as well as the Impressionists, Huet sought to capture both the specific features and emotional experience of the natural world. Using thick impasto he captured the textures and the effects of light in the changing seasons and weather conditions in nature. The painter’s simultaneously passionate and realistic vision of extreme manifestations of nature, his sense of drama and his vigorous style may have been influenced by his close friend and protégé Eugène Delacroix.