VERNET, Claude-Joseph - b. 1714 Avignon, d. 1789 Paris

French painter, one of the leading landscapists of the period. From 1733 to 1753 he worked in Rome, where he was influenced by the light and atmosphere of Claude and also by the more wild and dramatic art of Salvator Rosa. With Hubert Robert, he became a leading exponent of a type of idealized and somewhat sentimental landscape that had a great vogue at this time. Vernet was particularly celebrated for his paintings of the sea-shore and ports, and on returning to Paris in 1753 he was commissioned by Louis XV to paint a series of the sea-ports of France. The sixteen which he did are in the Louvre.

Vernet belonged to a family of French painters of which two other members attained distinction: his son Antoine-Charles-Horace Vernet (1758-1836) known as ‘Carle’, and his grandson Émile-Jean-Horace Vernet (1789-1863) known as Horace Vernet.