Claude Joseph VERNET (Avignon 1714-Paris 1789) Fishermen... Lot 47

Claude Joseph VERNET (Avignon 1714-Paris 1789) Fishermen taking out their net in a classical landscape Canvas Signed, dated and localized lower right: "J. Vernet. F. / Romae. 1746. " Height. 74 cm ; Width : 98 cm Provenance: - Probably commissioned and collected by the Marquis de Villette. Its sale on April 8, 1765 (expert Pierre Rémy), n° 36 - Collection Adam Gottlieb Thiermann; its sale, Cologne, Gertrudenhof, 20 May 1867 (J.M. Heberle), n° 382. - Anonymous sale, Paris, Palais Galliera, 6 June 1976, (Mes Ader, Picard, Tajan), lot 58 (72 000 frs). Bibliography: Florence Ingersoll-Smouse, Joseph Vernet peintre de marine, étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Étienne Bignou, Paris, 1926, vol. I, p. 49, no. 169, repr. pl. XVI fig. 36. Our painting was engraved in reverse by Longueil and Nicolet. Originally from Avignon, a city then belonging to the Pope, Vernet stayed in Italy for nearly twenty years from 1734 to 1752. From Rome, he made several trips, notably to Naples where he painted his first seascapes. While drawing directly on the motif, he studied the works of Salvator Rosa, Adrien Manglard, Giovanni-Paolo Pannini and Andrea Locatelli, and the atmospheric effects of Claude Lorrain, unifying these influences in a new style, hence the feeling of Arcadian nature that emerges from this landscape, lit in the background by a rising sun. At the time of our painting, Vernet was becoming famous. He was 32 years old and exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon. A year earlier, he had painted the two famous views of bridges over the Tiber (Louvre Museum), received commissions from Jean de Julienne - an amateur who had discovered Watteau -, and married Virginia Parker, whose father had given him a large and loyal English clientele. We spoke of a "clear blond manner" which also characterizes our painting. The critic Lafont de Saint-Yenne wrote about his works in the Salon of 1746: "The seascapes of the Provençal Vernet ? whose brand new beauties make a sensitive conviction that no genre is exhausted, even the most sterile by a man of genius. ? » A repeat of our composition, similar in size and unsigned, was given to the Northon Museum in Florida in 2013. Expert : Cabinet Éric TURQUIN