The Shipwreck Paintings of Joseph Vernet: An Iconographic Study
The Shipwreck Paintings of Joseph Vernet: An Iconographic Study
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Date
1975
Authors
Stevens, Adele de Werff
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Abstract
The theme of storm and shipwreck was a popular one
in eighteenth-century literature, music, opera, and plays as
well as in painting. Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) used this
theme and became renowned for his paintings of tempest and
shipwreck. For fifty-five years, Joseph Vernet's paintings
of a coastal shipwreck attracted an international clientele.
For them he depicted a vivid variety of clouds, turbulent
seas, disabled ships, and the viscissitudes of the living
and the dead. Trained by the followers of Pierre Puget
in marine painting in Provence, Vernet had observed a tempest
during his voyage from Marseille to Civitavecchia in 1734.
For the figures in his paintings Vernet drew on the traditional
motives of marine and Christian art. Other pictorial
sources were the works of Salvator Rosa, Claude Gelee, Adam
Elsheimer, and Tempesta, but his observation of nature and
"on the spot" sketches were the basis of his paintings. A
shipwreck scene often was one of the series of of the four
times of day.
Vernet's paintings in Italy mingled the post-shipwreck
activities with other seaside pursuits in a spacious landscape.
After his move to France in 1753, Vernet emphasized the
rescue of people. Shipwrecked families were his contribution
to the portrayal of drama in family life, which was
an important current in art in the middle of the
eighteenth century. During his last decade, Vernet's
shipwreck scenes featured a closer connection among the
persons depicted. He also showed a more compact, wellkept
version of the edifice, which stands above the
wrecked vessel. Throughout his career Vernet limited the
violence in his shipwreck scenes to the forces of nature
while portraying the noble behavior of ordinary people.