Claude-Joseph Vernet the son of Antoine Vernet (1689-1753) was born in Avignon in 1714. Vernet was an artisan painter of architectural decorations,coach panels,and the likes.

Before working with Jacques Viali(active 1681-1745) who at the time was a decorative, landscape and marine painter in Aix-enProvence, Vernet had moved to the studios of Philippe Sauvan (1697-1792), a leading history painter in Avignon. His recorded paintings were overdoors executed in 1731 in the Aix townhouse of the marquise de Simiane. In 1734 Vernet was sponsored by Joseph de Seytres, marquis de Caumont, a leading amateur in Avignon to make a study trip to Italy to finish his artistic education and to draw antiques for his patron.

Since Avignon was a papal territory, Vernet had a number of useful introductions among influential churchmen when he arrived in Rome. Likewise a young painter within the french community in Rome, Nicolas Vleughels(1668-1737) encouraged Vernet despite having no official affiliation with the royal institution. Probably he could have also entered the studio of the french marine painter Adrien Manglard(1695-1760). By 1740, in and around Rome and Naples, Vernet had developed an independet reputation as a painter of topographical landscape as well as of imaginary Italianate landscapes and marines which are demonstrated by the increasing number of entries in his current surviving account books of the mid-1730s onward. French ambassador Paul Hippolyte de Beauvillier, duc de Saint-Aignan (1684-1776) was his first important patron in Rome.

During Vernets long Roman Sojourn that lasted almost twenty years, members of the french diplomatic corps and visiting french prelates remained his important patrons till his definite return to France in 1753. Apart from working for the Roman nobility, e.g painting a series of major marines for Don Giacomo Borghese (Rome, Palazzo Borghese) he also had wealthy British travelers in Europe as his main patrons during their Grand Tours. The British purchased Italianate landscapes and marines as souvenirs of their visits to Italy and remained enthusiastic patrons of Vernet, even long after his return to France.

In seventeenth-century Italy, Vernet drew on the tradition of Ideal landscape painting codified by Claude Lorrain(1604/1605-1682), Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665), Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), and Salvator Rosa (1615-1573) that grew the appeal of his art twofold. Educated viewers could wander in their imaginations at what these artists had created; appropriate landscape settings for narratives from ancient history or mythology inspired by the landscape of the Roman Campagna and it's surrounding hills, and by the coastline south to Naples. Vernet continued to create a more vivid and convincing impression of nature that brought a more empirical and closely observed approach to the study of nature. By the mid-1740s and for the rest of his career he continued to supply his exequisite paintings to the growing European Demand. In 1746 Vernet first exhibited typical landscapes and marines at the Paris Salon that lead to his membership approval in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture .

In 1753 he became a full member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture exhibiting successfully at the Salon for the rest of his life. Vernet grabbed the attention of Louis XV's administration in 1746 and eventually in 1753 he was called back to France to commence on an official commission of painting large topographical views of the principal commercial and military seaports of the realm. From 1753 until 1765 the commission took Vernet on an arduous itinerary from Antibes in the south to Dieppe in the north during which he completed 15 large paintings. Among his greatest French paintings of the mid-eighteenth century are "Ports of France" (Paris, Musée du Louvre) which are both remarkable social and historical documents of contemporary port life, full of fascinating observation and concurrently beautifully composed and rendered works of art.

Before his death in 1789 on the eve of the french Revolution, Vernet had a large production of imaginary landscape and marine paintings. He was one of the most successfully acclaimed artists in France, and he received commissions all over Europe. The public and critics admired his art. He was eugolized by Denis Diderot ,a great writer and critic (1713-1784). Vernet's dramatic scenes of shipwrecks, which perfectly illustrate the contemporary concept of the sublime and expressing with horror the momentary quality of human endeavor before the rigid power of nature, delighted Diderot.

All photos Courtesy of Holstshop (Retouching and Printing Old Paintings)

A landscape at Sunset

A river with Fishermen

A Sea-Shore

A Ship Wreck in Stormy Seas

A Sporting Contest on the Tiber

The Four times of the day: Morning

The Four Times of the day: Night

Summer Evening, Landscape in Italy

The Four times a day Evening

The four times a day : Mid-day

Coastal View

Italian Landscape

An Italianate Habour Scene

Seaport Sunset

Seaport at Sunrise