Claude Joseph
Vernet

French painter, father of Carl Vernet, and the grandfather of Horace Vernet, also artists. Studied in AIX Jacques Viali. He soon went to Italy; in Rome he studied at the Pannini and Locatelli, and then have Bernardino Ferjani and became one of the most outstanding landscape painters of his time. Verne had in France a great success, and in 1753 he was admitted to the Academy.

In 1754-1762 by order of the king he painted a series of paintings of the Ports of France (Paris, Louvre), which was preceded by a series of sketches from nature. His large canvases were purchased to decorate palaces across Europe and can now be found in all the major European museums, especially many of the artist's works is located in Russia.

A French artist. Following the fundamental rule of time, Verne went to study in Italy, however, unlike most other artists, he was able to go on means of rich friends of the family, without waiting for the academic award. He remained in Italy an unusually long time, 19 years old, studied at Manglore, Pannini and Locatelli, worked a lot from nature in Tivoli, on the banks of the Tiber, and Naples. The first Italian period of his creation can be attributed to the work of Ludovisi Villa 1749 (St. Petersburg GOS. The Hermitage) and the Villa Pamphili (Moscow, GOS. Museum of fine arts. A. S. Pushkin), as well as the Ponte Rotto in Rome, and the View of the bridge and castle of St. Angel (1745, both Paris, Louvre). Early paintings of Vernet distinguish observation, the subtlety in the transmission of light and of light and air, of inspired realism, not typical for his contemporaries decorative version of the landscape. The landscapes of Vernet, continuing the high tradition of French landscape painters of the XVII century, especially Claude Lorrain, was known in France before the return of the artist in Paris (1753) and since then have always enjoyed great popularity. On his return to Paris Vernet received the title of academician and executes by order of the Marigny one of his famous series of Ports of France (Marseilles, Toulon, La Rochelle etc.; all 15 paintings belong to the Louvre, but exhibited at the Maritime Museum of Paris). In this cycle a significant place is also reserved full-scale sketches, but gradually Verne ceases to leave Paris, hurrying to fulfill countless orders. In the Salon of 1759 Diderot says: "there are a number of paintings of Vernet, some from life, others imaginary, but all written equally enthusiastically, passionately, skillfully, the same variety of color. This artist works with remarkable ease". Diderot is right, and yet Verne, more given to imagination, working memory, uses its own ready-made recipes, being fond of theatrical effects (in the scenes of shipwrecks, sea storms and fires) at the expense of the unique, subtle unity of color, the nuances of lighting and light-air perspective, characteristic of his best paintings. Vernet had an enormous influence on the subsequent development of the European landscape, being the undoubted precursor of romanticism in his narrative, genre and color searches.