Claude-Joseph Vernet

By the mid-1740s Vernet found a winning formula in his stormy shipwrecks, balmy coastal views and imaginary landscapes, which he continued to produce until the end of his career. They were coveted by a wide range of royal, aristocratic and influential collectors: from Roman nobles such as the Farnese and Borghese, to artists like Placido Costanzi and Sebastian Conca, not to mention French elites led by the duc de Saint-Aignan, French ambassador in Rome. By far Vernet’s most loyal patrons were British Grand Tourists; his paintings ended up in the most distinguished Georgian interiors belonging to the Duke of Wellington, Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh and the Marquess of Lansdowne among others. Vernet also painted topographical landscapes, such as the The Bridge and Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome (1745; Musée du Louvre, Paris), the View of the Bay of Naples (1748; Louvre-Lens), A View of Avignon (1757; Musée du Louvre, Paris), influenced by Vanvitelli and Piranesi.

Vernet returned to France in 1753 upon full admission into the Académie Royale and received one of the most important commissions of King Louis XV’s reign: to paint the series of Ports of France (Musée du Louvre and Musée de la Marine). Between 1755 and 1765, Vernet travelled extensively across France, from Dieppe in the North to Antibes in the South, for this record of major French seaports. Ultimately completing 15 of the views, the Ports of France series remains one of the greatest royal commissions of the century and a key monument of the Enlightenment.

In 1762 Vernet settled for good in Paris, where he continued to paint for a star-studded international clientele. With Romanticism in full steam, his late works show increasingly the sublime forces and forms of nature, as he concentrated on tempests, shipwrecks and nocturnes that illustrate extreme contrasts of nature and humanity (A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas, 1773; The National Gallery, London). Among the most memorable passages in Denis Diderot’s Salon of 1767 are the philosopher-critic’s rapturous fictional promenade through the imaginary landscapes of Vernet. Indeed, it was his ability to ‘steal nature’s secret’ that won him the critic’s favor. In a letter plausibly written by Vernet in 1765, the artist observes: ‘The shortest and surest method is to paint and draw from nature. Above all you must paint, because you have drawing and colour at the same time.’ Inspired by this ‘mini treatise’ and their meeting in 1781–82, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes took plein air painting to the next level––through his own practice and influential textbooks, passing such teachings onto Corot, Monet, Pisarro, Seurat and many others for whom landscape painting became a vehicle of modern innovation.❖