BIOGRAPHY - Thérèse Marthe Françoise Cotard-Dupré (1877 - 1920)

Thérèse-Marthe-Françoise Cotard-Dupré was the eldest child of the French Academic painter Julien Dupré. She was born in 1877 and was brought up surrounded by artists. Thérèse's father worked as a painter during her childhood, creating rural genre scenes heavily inspired by established Realist artists. Many members of her mother’s family worked as artists as well. Her uncle Georges Laugée was a friend of her father’s before Julien married into the family. Her grandfather, Désiré-François Laugée, is now seen as a predecessor to the Barbizon school of landscape painting, serving as an enormous influence on her father and his work. All of the Laugée children worked as artists. Thérèse’s mother, Marie, was a painter who exhibited some of her work at the Paris Salon in 1874. Meanwhile, Marie’s sisters Laurence and Jeanne-Eulalie-Célestine worked as an engraver and a portraitist, respectively.

Thérèse received her artistic education primarily from her father. Most of her work consists of genre paintings similar to those of her father and uncle Georges. However, she tended to primarily focus on genre scenes showing women at work in the countryside, often drawing on her experiences in Picardy, where her mother’s family was based. Like her aunt Jeanne, Thérèse became a member of the Salon des artistes français in 1907, exhibiting paintings there by 1910. She married the artist Edmond Cotard, and her sons Henri-Edmond and François also pursued artistic careers.

Today, paintings by Thérèse Dupré are somewhat rare since much of her work was lost during the First World War. She passed away at the age of 43 in 1920, possibly due to problems with alcohol.