Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) and workshop, Marine, large shipwreck scene

Oil on spun panel, 89.5 cm x 51 cm.
Antique museum frame, 110 cm x 71 cm.

This superb painting is a workshop version with variations of a larger work (163 cm x 99 cm) painted by Joseph Vernet in 1772. (See catalog raisonné produced by Florence Ingersoll-Smousse in 1926, volume II, number 962 "Shipwreck"). This painting was created for Madame du Barry, apparently the fourth in a series of five commissioned by Madame du Barry in 1771 for a salon in her pavilion in Louveciennes. A third version (51.4 by 82.9 cm) exists, called the Count of La Beraudière, which was auctioned at Sotheby's New York on June 5, 2002.

Joseph Vernet (1714-1789)

Claude Joseph Vernet trained in the southwest of France. His mentors were Louis René Vialy, Philippe Sauvan, and then Adrien Manglard. In 1734, Vernet left for Rome to study the work of landscape and marine painters such as Le Lorrain, whose style and subjects are reflected in his paintings. He built a solid international network during this trip, and later in Paris via the salons, the Royal Academy, and Masonic lodges. The cosmopolitan socializing this network fostered allowed him to deploy his social skills to deliberately launch the fashion for marine paintings across Europe, as his account book shows. This was particularly evident by skillfully exploiting the impact of the largest royal commission of paintings during the reign of Louis XV: that of twenty paintings of French ports in 1753. The King commissioned twenty-four paintings of French ports from him to document life in the ports; only fifteen paintings were completed, between 1753 and 1765 (Marseille, Bandol, Toulon, Antibes, Sète, Bordeaux, Bayonne, La Rochelle, Rochefort, and Dieppe); some ports are depicted multiple times. Vernet had been asked to depict the specific activities of the region in the foreground of each painting. These paintings are thus true testaments to life in the ports 250 years ago, establishing him as one of the greatest marine painters. They earned him recognition during his lifetime from most of the nobles most attached to the navy—including the Marquis de Laborde. From then on, Vernet was able to sell his seascapes profitably, "for their weight in gold," according to Pierre-Jean Mariette. Indeed, the list of his patrons is as varied and international as it is prestigious; it includes, among other famous figures, Catherine II of Russia. An admirer of Poussin and Le Lorrain, whose sunset seascape effects he also adapted to moonlight, Vernet nevertheless managed to create, through hard work, his own style. He generally depicted nature, giving considerable space to the sky; he also knew how to enliven each setting with characters and scenes from everyday life. His son Carle Vernet, his grandson Horace Vernet, and his great-grandson Émile Vernet-Lecomte were also painters. An English painter, Gabriel Mathias, was a broker for Joseph Vernet for Great Britain.