DOI issue:
No. 63 (June, 1898)
DOI article:Dayot, Armand: The three Vernets: Joseph, Carle, Horace
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21969#0043
The Three Vernets
lasted him ten years. During this time he led a
hard and wandering life, traversing France from
Marseilles to Bordeaux, from Bordeaux to Dieppe.
He travelled with his wife, a young Englishwoman
whom he had married in Italy, and their three
children, Livia, Orazio and Carle. The latter, who
was destined to continue
the Vernet tradition in so
glorious a fashion, was
born at Bordeaux in 1758.
The Ports de France
series, which was admir-
ably engraved by Cochin
and Lebas, popularised
the name of Joseph Ver-
net, but added nothing to
his real reputation. His
best work—the work by
which his name still lives
—was done in Italy, while
young and in the full
freedom of his ability.
However, his “ official”
commissions, his favour
at Court, and his admis-
sion into the Academy,
procured him so high a
reputation that it came to
be the fashion to own at least two or three Vernets.
Thus he became the unhappy victim of the pre-
vailing taste, and it was during this period he
produced innumerable inferior works bearing his
signature. Among them, however, were some of
rare merit; those, for example, which for many
years adorned the walls of the palace of St.
Cloud.
Joseph Vernet died at the Louvre in 1789, after
having enjoyed the great felicity of seeing his son
Carle seated beside him at the Academie Frangaise.
He was happy, too, in living long enough to kiss
his little grandson Horace, who at the time of
Joseph Vernet’s death was five months old, and
who, later on, used jokingly to declare he “ had
known his grandfather quite well.”
The Vernets, grandfather, son and grandson,
were all cursed with a fatal facility of production.
Their works are scattered by the thousand over all
the galleries of Europe, and among countless private
collections. I fancy the organisers of the Vernet
Exhibition in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts must have
had no light task to select the really worthiest
examples of the three artists’ work from among this
superabundance of material.
Carle Vernet’s strange and laborious life is worth
3°
describing in some detail. He was twenty-four
years of age when he won the Prix de Rome ; but
he stayed only a few months in the Eternal City,
whose mystic atmosphere exercised a singular in-
fluence on his sensitive nervous nature. At one
time he even manifested a desire to devote himself
to the Church; but Joseph
Vernet, warned of this
in time, recalled his son
at once, and in order to
rid him of his monastic
yearnings, encouraged the
young man to plunge
wildly into the dissipa-
tions of Parisian life. It
may be remarked that
Carle soon became recon-
ciled to his new mode of
life, and by dint of many
a merry night at the Cafe
du Foy, and many a hunt
with the Due d’Orleans,
soon forgot the cool
shades of the Roman
cloisters and the perfume
of the incense of Santa
Maria della Pace. In a
very short time he became
the recognised leader of the “ gilded youth ” of
Paris, head of the troop of muscadins and incroy-
ables, whose impertinent airs and extravagant
costume he has preserved with so much truth and
spirit in his imperishable drawings.
Carle Vernet was moreover a gentleman in the
fullest sense of the word, and had the further
advantage of a graceful, handsome figure, and a
striking face of much refinement. He was pas-
sionately fond of horses, and was eminently fitted
for an easy life of pleasure.
Carle was scarcely back from Rome before he
found himself the inheritor of his father’s prestige.
He was long kept busily engaged by General Bona-
parte, his earliest protector; then the great army
of amateurs claimed his art; and later he was in
high favour with the Bourbon Government. Thus
for a full half-century his pencil and his brush
worked away untiringly, and he produced an in-
finity of work. Much of it is delightful in its
sprightly grace and charm, whether it be the
finished oil painting, the simple sketch, the
drawing, the water-colour or the lithograph, in
which he was so fertile. The whole history of
France from the Napoleonic triumphs to the
accession of Louis-Philippe is comprised in the
v ■ . ■
~Cr-~*A
PRINCE JEROME NAPOLEON
FROM A SKETCH BY HORACE VERNET
[Never previotisly published)
lasted him ten years. During this time he led a
hard and wandering life, traversing France from
Marseilles to Bordeaux, from Bordeaux to Dieppe.
He travelled with his wife, a young Englishwoman
whom he had married in Italy, and their three
children, Livia, Orazio and Carle. The latter, who
was destined to continue
the Vernet tradition in so
glorious a fashion, was
born at Bordeaux in 1758.
The Ports de France
series, which was admir-
ably engraved by Cochin
and Lebas, popularised
the name of Joseph Ver-
net, but added nothing to
his real reputation. His
best work—the work by
which his name still lives
—was done in Italy, while
young and in the full
freedom of his ability.
However, his “ official”
commissions, his favour
at Court, and his admis-
sion into the Academy,
procured him so high a
reputation that it came to
be the fashion to own at least two or three Vernets.
Thus he became the unhappy victim of the pre-
vailing taste, and it was during this period he
produced innumerable inferior works bearing his
signature. Among them, however, were some of
rare merit; those, for example, which for many
years adorned the walls of the palace of St.
Cloud.
Joseph Vernet died at the Louvre in 1789, after
having enjoyed the great felicity of seeing his son
Carle seated beside him at the Academie Frangaise.
He was happy, too, in living long enough to kiss
his little grandson Horace, who at the time of
Joseph Vernet’s death was five months old, and
who, later on, used jokingly to declare he “ had
known his grandfather quite well.”
The Vernets, grandfather, son and grandson,
were all cursed with a fatal facility of production.
Their works are scattered by the thousand over all
the galleries of Europe, and among countless private
collections. I fancy the organisers of the Vernet
Exhibition in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts must have
had no light task to select the really worthiest
examples of the three artists’ work from among this
superabundance of material.
Carle Vernet’s strange and laborious life is worth
3°
describing in some detail. He was twenty-four
years of age when he won the Prix de Rome ; but
he stayed only a few months in the Eternal City,
whose mystic atmosphere exercised a singular in-
fluence on his sensitive nervous nature. At one
time he even manifested a desire to devote himself
to the Church; but Joseph
Vernet, warned of this
in time, recalled his son
at once, and in order to
rid him of his monastic
yearnings, encouraged the
young man to plunge
wildly into the dissipa-
tions of Parisian life. It
may be remarked that
Carle soon became recon-
ciled to his new mode of
life, and by dint of many
a merry night at the Cafe
du Foy, and many a hunt
with the Due d’Orleans,
soon forgot the cool
shades of the Roman
cloisters and the perfume
of the incense of Santa
Maria della Pace. In a
very short time he became
the recognised leader of the “ gilded youth ” of
Paris, head of the troop of muscadins and incroy-
ables, whose impertinent airs and extravagant
costume he has preserved with so much truth and
spirit in his imperishable drawings.
Carle Vernet was moreover a gentleman in the
fullest sense of the word, and had the further
advantage of a graceful, handsome figure, and a
striking face of much refinement. He was pas-
sionately fond of horses, and was eminently fitted
for an easy life of pleasure.
Carle was scarcely back from Rome before he
found himself the inheritor of his father’s prestige.
He was long kept busily engaged by General Bona-
parte, his earliest protector; then the great army
of amateurs claimed his art; and later he was in
high favour with the Bourbon Government. Thus
for a full half-century his pencil and his brush
worked away untiringly, and he produced an in-
finity of work. Much of it is delightful in its
sprightly grace and charm, whether it be the
finished oil painting, the simple sketch, the
drawing, the water-colour or the lithograph, in
which he was so fertile. The whole history of
France from the Napoleonic triumphs to the
accession of Louis-Philippe is comprised in the
v ■ . ■
~Cr-~*A
PRINCE JEROME NAPOLEON
FROM A SKETCH BY HORACE VERNET
[Never previotisly published)