Claude-Joseph Vernet

Charles-Théodose Godefroy de Villetaneuse (1718–1796);
Anonymous sale, Paris, Galerie Delessert, 16 March 1869, lot 102, for 1650 francs to Perrier;
Private collection, France, by the 1920s;
By whom sold ('Property from a French Private Collection'), London, Christie's, 6 December 2011, lot 26, sold for £97,250, where acquired by the present owner.

London, Royal Academy of Arts, France in the 18th Century: Royal Academy of Arts, Winter Exhibition 1968, 6 January – 3 March 1968, no. 701.

F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Joseph Vernet, peintre de marine, 1714–1789, étude critique suivie d'un catalogue raisonné de son œuvre peint, Paris 1926, vol. I, p. 91, cat. no. 720.
D. Sutton, France in the eighteenth century: Royal Academy of Arts, Winter Exhibition 1968, London 1968, p. 124, under cat no. 701, reproduced fig. 264.

 

ENGRAVED
By Jean Jacques Le Veau (1729–1786), in reverse.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: The canvas appears unlined. The paint surface is stable. The paint surface has a slightly uneven and discoloured varnish layer and there is some minor frame abrasion to the edges and a few small losses to the extreme lower right edge. There is a pattern of fine lines of craquelure and stretcher-bar lines most notably within the sky. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows a few very small spots and lines of retouching within the landscape and within the sky. Overall the painting is in good condition. The work is framed.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Painted during the busiest decade of Vernet’s career, this is a capriccio view of the village of Montferrat in the Var in south-east France. It is a location that lends itself perfectly to Vernet’s grand natural landscapes, the village itself perched precariously on a cliff edge in the dramatic Gorges du Verdon. The identification of the location is confirmed by the title of the engraving made after the work by Vernet’s contemporary Jean-Jacques Le Veau: Vue proche du Mont-Ferrat.¹ Vernet has however used a large element of artistic licence and added an aqueduct where one does not exist, as well as a raging waterfall descending from the village. The river Nartuby, though passing through the foreground with relative calm, rages further upstream as it descends from the heights of the gorge through a series of rapids. The blasted tree growing diagonally out of the riverbank to the right provides a dramatic repoussoir to the background landscape and is offset by the scene of quiet routine to the left where some fisherfolk gather in the day’s catch. It is of course the light, and Vernet’s acute understanding of it and its effects, that unites the landscape and that lends the painting a sense of both realism and romanticism. Vernet’s best landscapes combine the technical precision of his brush with the brilliance of his depiction of the light of the sun or moon. His powers of observation were completely in tune with the scientifically inquisitive Age of Enlightenment and combine with an unusual ability to invoke emotion. In this way they prefigure the work of the great Romantic painters of the 19^th century.

The painting dates from the greatest decade of Vernet’s career. Having spent the period between 1734–1752 in Rome, he was summoned back to France by the Marquis de Marigny to begin work for Louis XV on the greatest royal commission of the time: a series of twenty-four canvases depicting the Ports of France. Vernet did not complete the commission, but still managed to create sixteen large canvases that are today in the Musée du Louvre and the Musée National de la Marine. In the same year as the present work he completed a second view of the Port of Bordeaux for the series that is considered his finest achievement as a painter.

1. Ingersoll-Smouse 1926, vol. II, pl. CXX, fig. 262.