The New International Encyclopædia/Vernet

VERNET, vâr′nā̇′. A celebrated family of French painters. The earliest member to attain prominence, Claude Joseph (1714-89), called Joseph Vernet, a marine and landscape painter, was a pupil of his father, Axtoine Vernet (1689-1753), but was more influenced by Salvator Rosa during his course of study in Italy. His best known work is a series of fifteen paintings of the ports of France (1754-65) commissioned by Louis XV., now in the Musée de la Marine (Louvre). Though in the classic style of the school of Claude Lorraine, his works show a simpler and truer observation of nature than those of most contemporaries, and he is, in a certain sense, the precursor of the modern French landscape painters. His son and pupil, Antoine Charles Horace (1758-1836), usually called Carle Vernet, was best in genre works, usually comic in character, though he also painted Napoleonic battle-pieces, portraits, and hunting scenes, and made good designs for lithography; he is, indeed, one of the founders of French caricature. Though weak in color, his paintings are skillful in design.
His son, Horace Vernet (1789-1863), battle painter, the most celebrated member of the family, was born June 30, 1789. A pupil first of his father, then of Moreau and Vincent, he worked as a youth with facility with crayon, burin, or brush. In 1810 he showed his renunciation of classicism in his "Capture of a Redoubt," his first medal being won two years later with his "Taking of an Intrenched Camp." He was popular at Court, receiving commissions from the Empress Maria Louisa and the King of Westphalia. In 1814 he helped defend the Barrière de Clichy and received as a reward the Cross of the Legion of Honor from the Emperor. The incident of the siege was pictured in 1814, and refused by the Salon, Vernet having incurred the disfavor of the Bourbons. He subsequently won the favor of Charles X. and secured royal commissions. In 1820 he was elected to the Institute, and from 1828 to 1833 was director of the French Academy at Rome. He made several visits to Algiers and to Saint Petersburg, besides visiting and gathering notes for military subjects in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Turkey. At the opening of the Palace of Versailles in 1833 as an historical museum, Louis Philippe commissioned him to paint pictures of the battlefields of Friedland, Jena, and Wagram for the great gallery of battle pieces. Later he produced, from sketches made in Algiers, a series of pictures celebrating the conquest of that country, a work which occupied him from 1836 to 1842. Scenes of soldiery or battle appealed most strongly to him, though he executed many landscapes and portraits, among his sitters being Napoleon I., Louis Philippe, Emperor Nicholas, the Empress of Russia, Napoleon III., and many of the marshals of France. His immense productiveness resulted in over eight hundred canvases. His works display facility of invention, good arrangement, and fiery energy; but their execution is hasty, and they are deficient in color. Consult the works on Les Vernets by Charles Blanc (Paris, 1845), Lagrange (ib., 1864), Durande (ib., 1865), Clément (ib., 1876), and Dayot (ib., 1898); also Lagrange, Joseph Vernet et la peinture au XVIIIème siècle (ib., 1861); Bertholon and Lhote, Horace Vernet à Versailles, au Luxembourg et au Louvre (ib., 1863); Rees, Vernet and Delaroche (London, 1880).