Claude-Joseph Vernet

From an album probably compiled in Vienna in the early 19th Century.
Antoine-Augustin Renouard;
his sale, Paris, 20 November 1854, part of lot 628 (to Poitier);
sale, Versailles, 13 March 1966;
Private collection, England;
sale, London, Charles Miller Ltd, 27 October 2010, lot 50

Laid down on a 19th Century album page, bearing the attribution to "Vernett" in pen and brown ink. There is a narrow border of discoloration to the four edges. There are some small stains and light foxing in areas and what appears to be a very faint, old crease running horizontally across the upper section of the sheet.
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This attractive, large-scale sheet comes from an album of fifty-three drawings by Vernet probably compiled in Vienna between 1820 and 1830. The album later belonged to the French publisher and bibliophile Antoine-Augustin Renouard (1765–1853), before being purchased at his posthumous sale by Louis Potier, an antiquarian bookseller from the quai Malaquais. It was dispersed at auction at Versailles in 1966.

The drawings in the album were mostly of sites in and around Rome and Naples and were laid on mounts sometimes, as in the case of the present lot, inscribed in a German hand, Vernett. Sheets from the album are now found in major European and American museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art¹ and the Detroit Institute of Arts.²

During his Italian sojourn, Vernet frequently visited Naples and its coastline was a constant source of inspiration to him. Conisbee has suggested that the drawings in this album date from 1750 and may have been produced on one of the artist’s sketching tours around Rome and Naples between May and October of that year when there is a convenient break in his Roman account book.³

1. Inv. nos. 1976.334.1 & 1976.334.2
2. Inv. no.  67.256
3. P. Conisbee, Claude-Joseph Vernet, exhib. cat., London, Kenwood House, 1976