The son of a porcelain manufacturer, Dupré started his career in his father's works, after which he painted porcelain at his uncle's china factory at Sèvres. He first exhibited paintings in 1831 and in 1834 was awarded a second-class medal at the Salon. Visiting England in the same year, he learned, from the landscapes of John Constable, how to express movement in nature. The districts of Southampton and Plymouth, with their wide expanses of water, sky, and ground, provided his subjects. Late in life, he joined the artists' colony at Barbizon on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, where his style evolved, gaining in breadth, or largeness of treatment, and exhibiting greater simplicity in colour harmony.