PAUL HUET | MARAIS SALANTS AUX ENVIRONS DE SAINT-VALÈRY EN SOMME, PICARDIE

Sale: Catalogue des tableaux, esquisses, études, dessins par feu Paul Huet et se trouvant encore dans son atelier, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 15-16, 1878, lot 4

Huet family (acquired at the above sale)

Private collection (by descent from the above and sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 1, 2001, lot 88, illustrated)

Acquired at the above sale

Théophile Gautier, Les Beaux-Arts en Europe, Paris, 1855

Phillipe Burty, Paul Huet, Paris 1869, no. 21

René-Paul Huet, Paul Huet, Paris, 1911, p. 179-80; p. 511-13

Pierre Miquel, Paul Huet, 1962, p. 167

Paul Huet presented three works at the Salon of 1853, including Les Brisants a la pointe de Granville (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Marais salants aux environs de Saint-Valèry en somme, Picardie. Huet first conceived of this composition circa 1836, when he began work on a watercolor of the same subject. It was not until seventeen years later that Huet brought his idea to fruition on a much grander scale, the framed canvas extending six feet across. Huet’s landscapes relied on observation and realism, in contrast to the stylized Neoclassical landscapes that remained popular in the academies. Huet was heavily influenced by the British taste in landscape, in no doubt due to his friendship with the British landscapist Richard Parkes Bonington, a fellow student in the atelier of Antoine Baron Gros, and the exhibition of works by JMW Turner and John Constable at the Salon of 1824.  

Marais salants aux environs de Saint-Valèry en somme, Picardie received praise from critics and fellow artists when shown in 1853. Eugène Delacroix, a champion of Huet’s since their first meeting in 1822 and a member of the jury, even insisted the present work be hung in the Salon Carre. Despite this positive feedback, the public’s imagination that summer was caught by another monumental work, Rosa Bonheur’s The Horse Fair, which now hangs in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.