Paul Huet

Huet traveled through Normandy with the British watercolorist Richard Parkes Bonington at the outset of his career. He would repeatedly return to the region along France's northwest coast in the 1850s and 60s when bouts of good health enabled tremendous productivity. During one of these later sojourns, the artist likely executed the present view of Les Andelys, a town in Normandy situated along the banks of the Seine. Huet's dramatic rendering of the landscape, using colored washes to describe the undulating hills and foliage and the heavy gray clouds rolling into view, evokes his origins as a romantic artist and his role as a precursor to the Impressionists.