The arrival of the Storm, a landscape by a pupil of Joseph Vernet

31 1/8” x 52 “ (79 x 132 cm) - Framed : 37” x 57 7/8” (94 x 147 cm)

During his stay in Italy, which lasted from 1734 to 1752, Joseph Vernet made several trips to Naples between 1737 and 1746, where he painted many maritime scenes. The present painting was most likely executed in 1770-1780 by a pupil of the artist - possibly Jean-François Genillion (1750 - 1829) -. This painting is a testimony of the long-lasting influence of those Napolitean themes on the paintings of the Vernet circle.

1. Joseph Vernet, a painter under the influence of Italy

Born in Avignon in 1714, Joseph Vernet was trained in the studio of his father, a decorative painter, and in that of Philippe Sauvan (1697 - 1792), a renowned painter from Avignon. In 1734 he left for Rome where he frequented the studios of Bernardino Fergioni (1674 - 1738) and Adrien Manglard (1695-1760), two marine painters. During his stay in Rome, punctuated by trips to the Naples region, Vernet was greatly influenced by the discovery of the works of Claude Lorrain and Salvador Rosa and by the paintings of Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765), whose workshop he probably also frequented in Rome.

It was during his Italian period that Vernet specialised in marine paintings. He quickly became successful with the aristocratic clientele of the Grand Tour, as his livre de raison demonstrates.

He was called back to Paris in 1753 for an important royal commission: the representation of the Ports of France. These paintings, which are mostly kept today in the Musée de la Marine in Paris, are his best-known works. Accepted at the Royal Academy, the memories and the drawings brought back from Italy formed the basis from which he continuously developed the same themes until his death in 1789. He adopted after his return to France a different technique for his maritime landscapes, as if they were painted on porcelain while perfecting the rendering of light and the effects of mist that made his reputation.

2. Description of the painting

In this painting the artist combines several points of interest to compose a vivid picture, quivering in the wind as the storm breaks and the rain comes ashore. On the left of the painting a group of elegant visitors examine the fish offered to them by three fishermen. This group is violently illuminated by a last burst of sunlight, while the horizon is darkening and the first lightning bolts begin to flash.

Two other fishermen are hauling in their nets on the right, while a man and a woman are hurrying to the shore as the storm rumbles by; their walk on the rocks, which are probably slippery, seems hazardous. A fisherman's boat in the background is hurrying to land. A final group of field workers stand at the foot of the wall that protects the pier. Unaffected by the impending storm, they pursue their farming works, digging and cutting weeds for burning.

But the highlight of the painting is the depiction of the storm and the lightning that pierces the heavy sky of this warm late afternoon.

3. Related artworks

In this painting, the artist combines the group of elegant visitors, which first appeared in the View of a Bay near Naples, a picture painted by Vernet in 1740 now preserved at Apsley House (London - UK - 10th picture of the Gallery), with some architectural elements typical of the Neapolitan coast, such as the important complex of the mole and the Saint-Vincent tower, from which he probably drew inspiration for the central structure of our painting.

The lighthouse is also a recurrent element in Vernet's pictorial production. For example, we find this lighthouse perched on top of a rocky hill in Le Fanal exhaussé (11th picture of the Gallery), a painting produced in 1746 and now in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva.

The topographical arrangement depicted in our painting was to be repeated in the Storm on the Lighthouse, a painting from Joseph Vernet's workshop (12th picture of the Gallery - now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes) that would have been produced around 1770 - 1780. We believe that both paintings were probably executed at about the same time as they share very close dimensions : 82 x 133.8 cm for the Nantes' painting versus 79 x 132 cm for our painting.

This painting leads us to emphasise the pictorial quality of the representation of the landscape in the background of our painting: a focus on the lighthouse makes it possible to appreciate the quality of the atmospheric rendering of our painting, through the modulations of the sky crossed by the rain waves. The description of the architecture is also more picturesque (crenellations on the walls, lantern on the roof) and the modulations of the wall of the pier are livelier. The artist plays with different planes (a crenellated part, a walled door set back, a fort crowned with a watchtower) and inserts tasty details (such as the coat of arms on the edge of the fort wall, which does not appear in the Nantes painting).

The intelligence of the composition of our painting, the dexterity with which the arrival of the storm is represented and the proximity with other paintings by Vernet and his workshop lead us to propose an attribution to a pupil of Vernet. As an example, the two characters hurrying to the shore are quite similar to those of Jean-François Genillion.

4. Framing

At the end of the 19th century, this painting was pasted on a new canvas and framed in the gilded Salvador Rosa frame in which we present it today.

Main bibliographic references :
Léon Lagrange - Joseph Vernet - Didier & Cie 1864
Florence Ingersoll-Smouse - Joseph Vernet, Peintre de Marine - Etienne Bignou 1926
Catalogue of the exhibition Joseph Vernet 1714 - 1789 - Musée de la Marine in Paris (from 15 October 1976 to 9 January 1977)
Emilie Beck Saiello - Napoli e la Francia - I Pittori da paesaggio da Vernet a Valenciennes - L'erma di Bretschneider, Roma 2010