By Claude-Joseph Vernet
Located in PARIS, FR
We would like to thank Madame Beck-Saiello for confirming the autograph nature of this drawing after an in-person examination.
It was probably during an excursion in the countryside near Avignon that Claude-Joseph Vernet executed this drawing, enhanced with pen and brown ink, depicting a mansion on a hilltop overlooking a small village with geometric shapes.
1. Joseph Vernet, a painter influenced by Italy
Claude-Joseph Vernet was born in Avignon in 1714, the son of Antoine Vernet (1689-1753), an artisan painter of architectural decorations, coach panels, and the like. He moved to the studio of Philippe Sauvan (1697-1792), a leading history painter in Avignon, and then worked with Jacques Viali (active 1681-1745), a decorative, landscape, and marine painter in Aix-en-Provence. Vernet's first recorded paintings were decorative overdoors executed in 1731 in the Aix townhouse of the marquise de Simiane. In 1734, Joseph de Seytres, marquis de Caumont, a leading amateur in Avignon, sponsored Vernet to make a study trip to Italy to complete his artistic education and to draw antiquities for his patron.
As Avignon was a papal territory in Vernet's day, he also had a number of useful introductions among influential churchmen when he arrived in Rome. Vernet was soon at home in the French community there, and he was encouraged by Nicolas Vleughels (1668-1737), director of the Académie de France in Rome, even though the young painter had no official affiliation with the royal institution. He likely entered the studio of the French marine painter Adrien Manglard...
Category
1730s Old Masters Henry Clarence Pitz Art
MaterialsInk, Laid Paper, Pen, Carbon Pencil
