One has to realise that the art of landscape painting had become almost
extinct in France, and that the art of seascape had never existed, if
one wishes to account for Diderot’s enthusiasm with regard to Claude
Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), which made him exclaim, “What pictures! He
rivals the Creator in celerity, Nature in truth!” Our cooler judgment
cannot so easily pass over all that is cold and formal in his art.
But, taken in relation to his contemporaries, he deserves respect for
his emotional attitude towards nature, for a sense of the dramatic
that approaches Salvator Rosa’s, and for his admirable drawing of the
figures introduced into his landscapes. Vernet’s love of the sea awoke
when at the age of eighteen he journeyed to Rome, where he became
imbued with the classic tradition. He only returned to Paris in 1752,
and soon afterwards received from Louis XV. the commission to paint the
large series of _French Seaports_ (Nos. 940-954) which are now to be
seen in the rooms in this collection given up to the Musée de Marine.
In his other marines and landscapes (Nos. 912-939), not all of which
are actually exhibited, he allowed his imagination freer play than in
the _Seaports_, which were naturally of more topographic character.
Both his son Carle Vernet (1758-1836), a historical painter who
excelled in the rendering of horses in movement, and his grandson
Horace Vernet (1789-1863), a popular battle painter, are represented at
the Louvre, the former by the _Stag Hunt in the Forest of Meudon_ (No.
955), and the latter by the _Barrière de Clichy (Defence of Paris in
1814)_ (No. 956), and the uninspired _Judith and Holofernes_ (No. 957).