Claude Joseph Vernet, the father of Carl Vernet, and the grandfather of
Horace, was born at Avignon in 1714. He was the son of Antoine Vernet,
an obscure painter, who foretold that he would one day render his family
illustrious in art, and gave him every advantage that his limited means
would permit. Such were the extraordinary talents he exhibited almost in
his infancy, that his father regarded him as a prodigy, and dreaming of
nothing but seeing him become the greatest historical painter of the
age, he resolved to send him to Rome; and having, by great economy,
saved a few louis d'or, he put them into Joseph's pocket, when he was
about eighteen years of age, and sent him off with a wagoner, who
undertook to conduct him to Marseilles.