VERNET, Claude-Joseph (Avignon, 1714 – Paris, 1789)
Claude-Joseph Vernet studied under local artists in his native Avignon and in Aix-en-Provence, before moving to Rome in 1734 to complete his artistic training and to make drawings of antiquities for one of his Provençal patrons. He settled in Rome, where he quickly developed a reputation as a painter of landscapes and marines. As a painter of marine and coastal scenes, Vernet followed the example of Adrien Manglard (1695–1760), another French painter long established in the Eternal City. But, Vernet’s art was more carefully based on the observation of nature, while his more lively and naturalistic figure style was inspired by the example of Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691–1765), a close associate of Vernet and other French artists in Rome. Vernet’s art was enormously successful, and his studio attracted patrons from all over Europe, and especially the British on the Grand Tour. After almost twenty years in Italy, Vernet was called back to France in 1753 by Louis XV. There he undertook an important royal commission to paint The Ports of France, a series of large-scale views of the major commercial and military seaports of the realm. After a long tour of duty around the coasts of France, Vernet finally settled in Paris in 1765. In Paris he continued to enjoy a brilliant career, exhibiting regularly at the Salon, attracting critical acclaim and a steady stream of patrons from all over Europe. He died in his apartment at the Louvre in 1789.
Philip Conisbee
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