(Claude-)Joseph Vernet

 

(vĕrnā') , French family of painters. Claude Joseph Vernet, 1714–89, marine painter, b. Avignon, studied with his father, Antoine Vernet, a decorative painter, and in Rome, where he acquired a reputation for fine work. He was summoned to Paris in 1753 and commissioned by the king to paint the famous series of seaports of France. He finished 14 of them (Louvre). His son Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, 1758–1835, called Carle Vernet, rose to fame under the empire with his drawings of the Italian campaign and his paintings The Battle of Marengo (Versailles) and Morning of Austerlitz. Under the Restoration he was popular as a lithographer and painter of dogs, horses, and scenes of the hunt. His son Émile Jean Horace Vernet, 1789–1863, was one of the most popular military painters of the 19th cent. He is best known for his decorations of the Constantine Room at Versailles and his Defense of the Barrier at Clichy (Louvre).

Claude Joseph Vernet (August 14, 1714 – December 3, 1789) was a French painter. His son, Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, was also a painter.

Biography

Vernet was born in Avignon.

When only fourteen years of age he aided his father, 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 started for Rome. The sight of the sea at Marseilles 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 studio of a marine painter, Bernardino Fergioni.

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 his 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".

For twenty years Vernet lived on in Rome, producing views of seaports, storms, calms, moonlights. In 1753 he was recalled to Paris: here, by royal command, he executed the remarkable series of the seaports of France (now in the Louvre and the Musée national de la Marine) by which he is best known. On his return he became a member of the academy, but he had previously contributed to the exhibitions of 1746 and following years, and he continued to exhibit, with rare exceptions, down to the date of his death, which took place in his lodgings in the Louvre on the 3rd of December 1789.

Amongst the very numerous engravers of his works may be specially cited Le Bas, Cochin, Basan, Duret, Flipart and Le Veau in France, and in England Vivares.

Trivia

In Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", fictional detective Sherlock Holmes claims that his grandmother is Vernet's sister, without stating whether this is Claude Joseph or Antoine Charles Horace's sister.

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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