CLAUDE-JOSEPH VERNET

Avignon 1714 — 1789 Paris

Three Drawings of Women Dressed & in Hats

black chalk. the 3 women in hats, numbered 150. measures approx 4 3/4 x 6 1/8"; the lady holding her arm, numbered 52, is approx. 7 1/2 x 3 1/2"; the lady looking down is approx. 6 5/8 x 4".

provenance:
P. Geismar, Paris (L.2078b) Manufacturer of paper and collector of drawings, primarily French, active during the first quarter of the 20th c.

The Albertina holds an important group of around 20 of Vernet’s nature drawings. Another group of 53 sheets of the same type were sold in Versailles in 1966. Both groups were made in or around Rome and Naples. Few of these are published. The Bibliotheque d'Art et Archeologie in Paris and the Fondation Labouchere in Nantes have notebooks of sketches and the Louvre has an album with the contents of at least 3 notebooks . Yet no comprehensive study of Vernet’s drawings has yet been made. Philip Conisbee’s Kenwood House exhibition catalogue of 1976 is to date the only publication concerned, if only in part, with the artist’s drawings. Yet the sale of 1790 after the artist's death included almost 700 drawings, plus countless numbers of sketches.

The present studies are from life and record the artist's observation of figures he encountered. He made and kept a store of such studies to incorporate in his paintings, such as his port scenes, enlivening them with realistic, animated inhabitants. Diderot wrote "he has his men, women and children in reserve with which he populates his canvas as one populates a colony."

Vernet was the central figure in the development of landscape painting in 18th c. France.