Dutilleux was an intimate friend of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot and Eugene Delacroix. He had exhibited various works at the Paris Salons since 1834, but only in 1851, during a stay in the Forest of Fountainbleau, did he discover his vocation as a landscape painter. The style and technique of his own mature landscapes so strongly reflect the influence of Corot that some of Dutilleux's works have been mistakenly attributed to Corot himself.