Caretaker's Cottage in the Forest of Compiegne

Paul Huet was a principal intermediary between the French and British landscape schools during the revolutionary decade of the 1820s. From 1822, he sketched in oil regularly in suburbs of Paris. In the year that this early masterwork was painted he was sharing a studio with Eugene Delacroix and Richard Parkes Bonington. This painting is Huet's most ambitious early work and a melange of the different styles that vied for his attention at this moment. The impression on Huet of the English landscapes shown at the 1824 Paris Salon, especially those of Bonington and John Constable, was profound, although he continually sought to temper the English manner with inspiration from a medley of old master sources, including Claude, Rubens, and Rembrandt. A number of similar subjects by Huet, in a variety of media, are known, yet this is the only one identifiable with a specific landscape site. During several centuries, the forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris, was a royal hunting preserve, much like Windsor Great Park near London. The caretaker's cottage was the residence of the gamekeeper.