Paul Huet

Paul Huet was a key figure in the history of landscape painting in the French Romantic era. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, he studied and worked alongside his friend Richard Parkes-Bonington and was an influence on Théodore Rousseau, with whom he later worked. He was also a friend and early scholar of Eugène Delacroix, and he is credited with painting the landscape background of Delacroix's portrait of Louis-Auguste Schwiter.

Etienne Carjat, ‘Portrait of Paul Huet’, about 1865, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN, Paris (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski 

Huet's admiration for the work of Constable and his contemporaries played an important role in the French appreciation of British landscape painting.