LONDON, ENGLAND.- This is the first work by Paul Huet to enter the National Gallery collection, and enriches the existing group of landscape oil sketches, as well as the collection of Barbizon and Impressionist paintings.

Whilst a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, Huet often visited the park at Saint-Cloud (a royal domain to the South-West of Paris). There he would make oil sketches of magnificent groups of trees.

This early study is direct and fresh, its immediacy heightened by the bold strokes with which he stops the painting short at the right side.

'Trees in the Park at Saint-Cloud' has been presented to the National Gallery by the Lishawa Family in memory of Kate (Lishawa), 2005.

Paul Huet (1803-1869) was an important figure in the history of landscape painting in France during the nineteenth century.

He was a leading exponent of Romantic landscape painting, and an enthusiast of the British landscape painting of Constable and his contemporaries.

Huet was a friend of Richard Parkes Bonington and Delacroix, and may have painted the landscape background of Delacroix's 'Portrait of Baron Schwiter' (National Gallery).