The present painting is a work of Vernet's maturity, dated to 1771, in which he skillfully combines the three types of landscape paintings defined by Claude-Henri Watelet, La nature copiée, la nature arrangée et les representation idéales de la nature champêtre [nature copied, nature composed and the ideal representation of the natural countryside].
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Born in Avignon, Vernet went to Rome at the age of twenty to become a history painter. He soon took to landscape painting after discovering the art of Claude Gellée, Salvator Rosa and Andrea Locatelli and decided to join the Studio of Adrien Manglard, a succesful French marine painter. He travelled to Naples in 1737 and on many other occasions. By 1740, Vernet had established a reputation as a painter of seascapes and the French diplomats as well as the English Grand Tourists were to be among Vernet's most consistent patrons.
In 1746, Vernet gained further recognition in France as he was accepted at the Academie Royale in Paris which enabled him to exhibit at the Salon from then on. But it is not before 1753 that Vernet was summoned back to France, on the initiative of the Marquis de Marigny, for what was to be one of Louis XV's most important Royal commisions: Les ports de France series, (now in the Louvre and the Musée National de la Marine) for which he is best known.
Collections
Vernet is represented in the following collections: Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; The Louvre, Paris; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; Musee d'Art Roger-Quilliot, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford; Courtauld Institute of Art, London; The Wallace Collection, London; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, amongst others.
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