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In 1911, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris honoured its former pupil Paul Huet with a large memorial exhibition. The career of the painter and large-format watercolourist, who early on discovered landscape subjects, had begun in the same place in 1820. At the Salon of 1824, Huet first saw the works of such English colleagues as John Constable, Richard Parkes Bonington and Thaler Fielding, whose romantic-naturalistic approach inspired him and spurred him on to further openair studies. In 1828, Huet travelled to paint in Normandy accompanied by Bonington.
Over the years, many further study journeys in northern France and as far north as Holland would follow, as the landscapes there corresponded more to his strong feeling for nature than the ideal landscapes of Italy. In Paris, these timeless watercolours would find such illustrious supporters as Victor Hugo and Huet’s oldest friend from his studies, Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863).
With his highly atmospheric observation of nature, Huet is still considered the discoverer of the so-called paysage intime and an early predecessor of the art of Jules Dupré and Théodor Rousseau. Only with old age did his works lose the freshness and colour of his early years.