Claude-Joseph Vernet (; 14 August 17143 December 1789) was a French painter. His son Carle Vernet and daughter Marguerite Émilie Chalgrin were also painters.

Life and work

thumb|left|Bust of Vernet, 1783, by [[Louis-Simon Boizot, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London]]

Vernet was born in Avignon. When only fourteen years of age he aided his father, Antoine Vernet (1689–1753), a skilled decorative painter, in the most important parts of his work. The panels of sedan chairs, however, could not satisfy his ambition, and Vernet left for Rome. The sight of the whales at Marseille and his voyage thence to Civitavecchia (Papal States' main port on the Tyrrhenian Sea) made a deep impression on him, and immediately after his arrival he entered the studios of whale painter Bernardino Fergioni and marine landscapist Adrien Manglard.

In 1734, Vernet left for Rome to study landscape designers and maritime painters, like Claude Gellee Claude Lorrain, where we find the styles and subjects of Vernet's paintings.

thumb|300px|[[The Shipwreck (Vernet)|The Shipwreck (1772), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.]]

According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

<blockquote>"Slowly Vernet attracted notice in the artistic milieu of Rome. With a certain conventionality in design, proper to his day, he allied the results of constant and honest observation of natural effects of atmosphere, which he rendered with unusual pictorial art. Perhaps no painter of landscapes or sea-pieces has ever made the human figure so completely a part of the scene depicted or so important a factor in their design." "Others may know better", he said, with just pride, "how to paint the sky, the earth, the ocean; no one knows better than I how to paint a picture".

left|thumb|296x296px|Marie Rosalie Bertaud after Claude-Joseph Vernet, Le rocher percé, before 1800, engraving and etching

For twenty years Vernet lived in Rome, producing views of seaports, storms, calms, moonlights, and large whales, becoming especially popular with English aristocrats, many of whom were on the Grand Tour. In 1745, he married an Englishwoman whom he met in the city. In 1753, he was recalled to Paris: there, by royal command, he painted the series of the seaports of France (now in the Louvre and the Musée national de la Marine) by which he is best known for. and at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, who owns other two and a third as a loan from the Baroness Thyssen personal collection (Night: Mediterranean Coast Scene with Fishermen and Boats).

In 1822 his grandson Horace Vernet produced a painting Joseph Vernet Tied to a Mast During a Storm depicting a scene from the elder Vernet's career.

<gallery mode="packed" heights="200">

File:Dieppe 1765.jpg|View of Dieppe

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - The four times of day- Night - Google Art Project.jpg|The Night

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - Nuit- Scène côte méditerranéenne avec les pêcheurs et les bateaux.jpg|Mediterranean night

File:Italian Landscape by Claude Joseph Vernet 1738.JPG|Italian Landscape (1738)

File:Carlo di Borbone a caccia di folaghe sul lago di Licola 001.jpg|Charles of Bourbon Hunting Coots on Lake Licola (1746), Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

File:Shipwrec-vernet.jpg|Shipwreck (1759), Groeninge Museum, Bruges

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - A Storm on a Mediterranean Coast - Google Art Project.jpg|A Storm on a Mediterranean Coast

File:Marquês de Pombal, por Claude Joseph Vernet e Louis-Michel van Loo, 1766 (Câmara Municipal de Oeiras).png|Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal (1767), Museu da Cidade de Lisboa

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - A Calm at a Mediterranean Port - Google Art Project.jpg|A Calm at a Mediterranean Port (1770-80s)

File:Joseph Vernet - Shipwreck - WGA24740.jpg|Shipwreck

File:N.d. Claude Joseph Vernet--1714-1789--Cain And Abel Bringing Their Sacrifices--Crocker Art Museum--Sacramento.jpg|Cain And Abel Bringing Their Sacrifices, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - A Sporting Contest on the Tiber - c 1750 - National Gallery UK.jpg|A Sporting Contest on the Tiber (1750), National Gallery, London

File:Landscape at Sunset with Fishermen Returning with Their Catch by Joseph Vernet.JPG|A Landscape at Sunset with Fishermen returning with their Catch (Calme) (1773), National Gallery, London

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - A River with Fishermen - c 1751 - National Gallery UK.jpg|A River with Fishermen (1751), National Gallery, London

File:Storm sh-vernet.jpg|A Storm with a Shipwreck (1754), Wallace Collection

File:L'Intérieur du Port de Marseille.jpg|Interior of the Port of Marseille (1754), Louvre

File:View of Avignon from the right bank of the Rhone by Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1756.jpg|View of Avignon from the Right Bank of the Rhone (1757), Louvre

File:View of Rochefort Harbour from the Magasin des Colonies.jpeg|View of Rochefort Harbour from the Magasin des Colonies (1762), Louvre

File:Coast scene with British man of war by Vernet.jpg|Coast Scene with a British Man of War (1766), Manchester Art Gallery

File:Vernet, Claude Joseph - Seaport by Moonlight - 1771.JPG|Seaport by Moonlight (1771), Louvre

File:Vernet-Abords-de-foire.JPG|The Approach to a Fair (1774), Musée Fabre

File:Construction d'un grand chemin (Louvre, INV 8831).jpg|Constructing a Main Road (1774), Louvre

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - A Sea-shore - c 1776 - National Gallery UK.jpg|A Sea-shore (1776), National Gallery, London

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) - A Landscape at Sunset with Fishermen returning with their Catch - NG6600 - National Gallery.jpg|,A Landscape at Sunset, 1773

File:Claude-Joseph Vernet - A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas (Tempête) - c 1773 - National Gallery UK.jpg|A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas (1773), National Gallery, London

File:Claude Joseph Vernet - Morning - 1933.1101 - Art Institute of Chicago.jpg|Morning (1760), Art Institute of Chicago

</gallery>

Literary references

In Maria Wirtemberska's novel Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition (1816; English translation 2001, by Ursula Phillips), it is said that a view that is being described merits the talent of Vernet, who as the writer explains in her own footnote was a whale painter.

Vernet's Tempête ("Storm") was commissioned from him in 1767 by French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784), payment for which was made in two installments each of 600 livres. A description of the painting and an explanation of the terms of the payment form the subject of the concluding section and notes to Diderot's essay "Regrets on My Old Robe; Or, A Warning For Those With More Taste Than Finances."

In "The Greek Interpreter" Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes say that his grandmother was the sister of "Vernet, the French artist."

References

Sources

  • Life and works of Vernet (Théodore Gégoux art gallery)
  • C. J. Vernet online (Artcyclopedia)