Study for "Forest of Fontainebleau: Hunters"

As the leading Romantic artist of the 1820s, Huet shaped landscape painting for a generation and was a dominant influence on the Barbizon school. He started painting in the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1849 and returned frequently. Fontainebleau and its sister forest of Compiègne had served as royal hunting preserves for centuries and were revived as such by Napoleon III in the nineteenth century. Huet created this drawing as a preparatory study for a painting now in the Louvre, Forest of Fontainebleau: Hunters. The dynamic sketch shows the loose forms of the boy and dogs as they charge up the slope to join the rest of the hunting party.