Claude-Joseph Vernet - A STORMY COASTAL SCENE WITH FIGURES ON A BEACH HAVING ESCAPED A SHIPWRECK ENGRAVED BY KLAUBER.

 

Claude-Joseph Vernet

AVIGNON 1714 - 1789 PARIS

A STORMY COASTAL SCENE WITH FIGURES ON A BEACH HAVING ESCAPED A SHIPWRECK
ENGRAVED BY KLAUBER.

signed and dated (strengthened) lower left: Joseph Vernet / 1784

oil on canvas

77 by 101.1 cm.; 30 1/4 by 39 3/4 in.

ENGRAVED By Klauber. The painting is most probably identifiable with Ingersoll-Smouse no. 1129, which records two paintings bought directly from Vernet by M. Dubois, on 26 April 1784, for 1,000 livres. It was exhibited at the Salon the following year and subsequently engraved by Klauber; the only visual record of the painting until its recent rediscovery.  

Lagrange notes the picture in a second Dubois sale, in 1788.¹  This must be that on 15-18 December of that year, when the same Dubois (Lugt refers to him as 'marchand joaillier') sold 115 paintings at Paillet.

By 1784 Vernet had been the foremost painter of marine subjects in France for over 40 years. He learned his trade in Italy however and it was probably through an association with Adrian Manglard in Rome, where he arrived in 1734, that he first turned to marine painting. He remained in Rome until 1753 when he was summoned back to France, on the initiative of the Marquis de Marigny who had visited Vernet's studio in Rome in 1746, in order to fulfil one of the most important commissions of the reign of Louis XV: the representation of the Ports de France, a project he continued to work on until 1765 and that was subsequently completed by Jean-François Hue (1751-1823). Vernet's style changed little throughout his career and some of his finest works date from his late maturity; see, for example, the enormous canvas (160 by 261 cm) commissioned by William Petty, 2nd Earl Shelburne and executed in 1776 at the age of 62.²
1. See Literature.
2. Sold New York, Sotheby's, 27 January 2011, lot 183, for $6.2m.