Claude-Joseph Vernet

Vernet, Joseph
Vernet, Claude Joseph

French, 1714 - 1789

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French painter and engraver from Avignon (1714-1789)

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A masted ship with tattered sails crashes near a rocky shore among choppy waves, beneath a sky filled with charcoal-gray clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. More then two dozen men and women are scattered among the wreckage and along the shore. They all have pale skin and are small in scale within the landscape. Some of them are barefoot, and they wear clothing in ivory white, ruby red, slate gray, beige, or teal blue. The tall mast of the ship pitches at a steep angle from near the lower right corner of the canvas toward the upper left. A narrow red flag streams in the wind from the top of the mast. Seven men cling to the crow’s nest, a platform near the top of the mast, and on the mast around it. More people work amid a fallen sail on the ship’s deck and dangle from the rigging that is being pulled ashore by others. The ship’s second mast is broken in half, splintered where it has fallen against jagged boulders in the lower right corner. On the shore, a woman wearing a pink dress and blue stockings holds her arms up to the sky as a bare-chested man wraps his arms around her waist. A man nearby hunches over as he hauls in a cage from the surf. To our left, a second woman is surrounded by three men, two of whom support her torso. She wears a pale yellow skirt and her white shirt has fallen to expose one breast. Two trunks and a large roll of cloth are piled behind the trio, to our left. On the other side of the group, a brown dog sits and looks back over its shoulder toward a man who rolls a barrel onto the beach. A rocky, vertical cliff nearly spans the height of the left edge of the painting, and the cliffs continue along the waterline into the distance. Two people perch on a rocky outcropping near those on the beach, and a tree with a cracked, splintered trunk is doubled back by the wind above the pair. Water sprays high against the cliffs beyond, and a fortress with a castle sits atop the cliffs in the distance. Farther out in the water and to our right, a second ship with sails bulging in the wind lurches to the right. A streak of bright, golden-yellow lightning zigzags in the bank of clouds over this ship and reaches the horizon to our left, illuminating the low skyline of a town in the deep distance, beyond the cliffs. The clouds around the lightning are bathed in coral-peach light, but the surrounding clouds are dark gray. The artist signed and dated the work as if he had inscribed the side of one trunk, near the lower left corner, “J. Vernet F. 1772.”
Claude-Joseph Vernet, The Shipwreck, 1772, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund and Chester Dale Fund, 2000.22.1

The Shipwreck

Claude-Joseph Vernet · 1772 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.22.1

Moonlight falls across several masted ships near a rocky shoreline in this horizontal painting. The sky fills the top three-quarters of the picture. A veil of slate-gray clouds is lit to pearl white around the crisp, full moon at the center of the composition. Patches of denim-blue sky are seen through breaks in the blanket of clouds. Moonlight reflects down the center of rippling, silvery-gray water that laps against a beach close to us, along the bottom edge of the painting. A tent is set up in the lower left corner of the composition. There, two women and one man stand looking at a glowing fire next to the tent. One woman holds a basket on her head, the other tucks a flat basket under one arm. The man stands between the two women, and a fourth man crouches near the fire, his back to us. In the opening of the tent, another woman kneels over a large bowl as she looks at the fire. A fifth person, a man, gazes at the fire as he sits smoking a long-stemmed pipe on a boulder. At the foot of the boulders, a man lies back against some bundles, one arm thrown up over his head. A dog curls up next to his hip. Not far from the sleeping man and in the center of the foreground, a man carries several long wooden objects, possibly oars, over one shoulder while a dog beyond him barks at the lapping surf. The beach curves like a C away from us, along the left. At the point of the curve in the middle distance, a structure like a city wall and gate jut out to the water’s edge. More buildings atop steep cliffs rise vertically beyond the gate. The shoreline curves into the distance again, and more buildings, including a lighthouse, and masted ships there are smoke-gray silhouettes. Near the lower right corner of the painting, four men pull on ropes tied around the prow of a small wooden boat while three others push it toward the land. Another man stands in the far end. A short distance beyond that boat is a tall wooden ship with three masts and rigging outlined against the night sky. Windows along the decks of that boat’s wide stern, angled toward us, glow with golden light. Beyond it and a bit to our left, another ship, smaller in scale, sails away from us. Several more ships move back to the horizon until we only see strokes of white and gray to indicate their unfurled sails.
Claude-Joseph Vernet, Moonlight, 1772, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund and Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2018.13.1

Moonlight

Claude-Joseph Vernet · 1772 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2018.13.1

Claude-Joseph Vernet, Figure Studies, Including One Man Sleeping on the Ground and Two Men Sawing, pen and black ink with gray wash on laid paper, Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009.70.240

Figure Studies, Including One Man Sleeping on the Ground and Two Men Sawing

Claude-Joseph Vernet · · pen and black ink with gray wash on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2009.70.240

Claude-Joseph Vernet, Quayside Figures and a Length of Rope Attached to a Bollard, pen and black ink on laid paper, Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009.70.243

Quayside Figures and a Length of Rope Attached to a Bollard

Claude-Joseph Vernet · · pen and black ink on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2009.70.243

Claude-Joseph Vernet, Trees Reflected in a Brook, pen and brown ink, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1984.78.1

Trees Reflected in a Brook

Claude-Joseph Vernet · · pen and brown ink ·  Accession ID  1984.78.1

Claude-Joseph Vernet, Ten Men Pulling on Ropes, pen and black ink with gray wash on pale greenish laid paper, Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009.70.242

Ten Men Pulling on Ropes

Claude-Joseph Vernet · · pen and black ink with gray wash on pale greenish laid paper ·  Accession ID  2009.70.242

Claude-Joseph Vernet, Eight Studies of Figures and a Ship at Sea, pen and black ink with brown wash on greenish laid paper, Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009.70.241

Eight Studies of Figures and a Ship at Sea

Claude-Joseph Vernet · · pen and black ink with brown wash on greenish laid paper ·  Accession ID  2009.70.241

Bibliography

1864

  • Lagrange, Léon. Les Vernets. Joseph Vernet et la peinture au xv iiie siècle. 2nd ed. Paris, 1864.

1926

  • Ingersoll-Smouse, Florence. Joseph Vernet, peintre de marine, 1714–1789. 2 vols. Paris, 1926.

1976

  • Conisbee, Philip. Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1714–1789. Exh. cat. Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, London, 1976.

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: 431.