The Shipwreck

1772

Claude-Joseph Vernet

Painter, French, 1714 - 1789

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.”

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

This dramatic scene is meant to evoke the “sublime,” a feeling that combines terror, awe, and delight. The small, frantic figures are overwhelmed by the violence of nature: the wind and waves and the jagged lightning bolt brightening the dark sky. Moonlight, the partner painting, presents a contrast: a calm, reassuring harbor, peacefully subdued by man-made architecture. Marine painting was popular in the 18th century, particularly in the British Empire, which maintained a powerful fleet of ships to secure its colonies around the globe. British aristocrats commissioned paired paintings from Vernet to decorate their country homes.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 55


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned November 1771 by Henry, 8th Lord Arundell of Wardour [1740-1808], Wardour Castle, Tisbury, Wiltshire;[1] by descent in his family;[2] (Arundell sale, at Wardour Castle, 10 September 1952, no. 144, as The Storm [paired with The Calm]). (Galerie Popoff, Paris), by 1957; private collection, France; (Marc Blondeau, Paris/Sotheby's, New York); purchased 17 February 2000 by NGA.
[1] The banker Henry Hoare II [1705-1785], who acted both as agent and patron for the artist, commissioned a pair of paintings on behalf of Lord Arundell. Completed and paid for by August 1772, the two paintings were The Shipwreck and Moonlight. They remained together until shortly after the 1952 sale; the current (2001) location of Moonlight is not known.
[2] The line of the Arundells of Wardour became extinct with the death of John Francis Arundell, 16th Baron Arundell of Wardour, who was killed in action during World War II on 25 September 1944.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2003

  • The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Altes Museum, Berlin, 2003-2004, not in cat. (shown only in Washington).

2012

  • Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and "The Life Line", Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012, no. 11, fig. 10.

Bibliography

1864

  • Lagrange, Léon. Les Vernets. Joseph Vernet et la peinture au xviii e siècle. 2nd ed. Paris, 1864: 350, 367.

1926

  • Ingersoll-Smouse, Florence. Joseph Vernet, peintre de marine, 1714 – 1789. 2 vols. Paris, 1926: 2:23, nos. 954 – 955.

1952

  • Waterhouse, Ellis K. “English Painting and France in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 15 (1952): 133, repro.

2000

  • Washington 2000-2001. "Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century." (Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art.) Washington 2000: 46, repro., 47.

2001

  • Conisbee, Philip. "The Shipwreck, 1772, by Claude-Joseph Vernet." In Mélanges en Hommage à Pierre Rosenberg: Peintures et dessins en France et en Italie XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles. Paris, 2001: 153-158, fig. 2.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 258-259, no. 209, color repro.

  • National Gallery of Art. "National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection." Selected and with commentaries by John Oliver Hand. Washington, 2004: 258-259, no. 209, color repro.

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: no. 92, 432-435, color repro.

2012

  • Foster, Kathleen A. "Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and 'The Life Line'." American Art Review 24, no. 6 (November-December 2012): 88, color repro.

2015

  • "Art for the Nation: The Story of the Patrons' Permanent Fund." National Gallery of Art Bulletin, no. 53 (Fall 2015):16-17, repro.

2016

  • Baetjer, Katharine. "Jean Pillement: Shipwrecks and the Sublime." Metropolitan Museum Journal 51 (2016): 102, fig. 4.

2018

  • Yin, Steph. "How Often Does Lightning Strike? More Than Artists Figured." New York Times 167, no. 57,991 (June 12, 2018): D2, color fig.

2021

  • Kennicott, Philip and Matthew Cappucci. "Examining the Elements of Breathtaking Art." Washington Post 144, no. 225 (July 18, 2021): E1, E10, color repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: J. Vernet / F. 1772

Wikidata ID

Q20020198


You may be interested in

Loading Results