Vernet

Vernet, the name of three eminent French painters. CLAUDE JOSEPH VERNET was born at Avignon in 1714, travelled in Italy, and worked for twenty years in Rome, but returned to Paris in 1753 to paint for the king the sixteen chief seaports of France. He died 3d December 1789. See the study by Lagrange (Paris, 1863).—His son, ANTOINE CHARLES HORACE VERNET, popularly known as Carle Vernet, was born at Bordeaux in 1758. He received his education at the Academy of Paris, and, gaining the grand prix (1782), studied thereafter in Rome. He enjoyed a high reputation at Paris as a painter of horses, dogs, and large battle-pieces to the glorification of the great Emperor down to his death, 17th November 1836.—EMILE JEAN HORACE VERNET, his son, was born in Paris, June 30, 1789, and had but an irregular education amid the tumults of the Revolution. He soon made himself exceedingly popular by abundant work always brilliant and vigorous, but hardly ever anything more. His best work is marked by the characteristic faults of improvisation; his detail has ever much more of phantasy than nature. But his battle-pieces—Friedland, Wagram, Jena, Fontenoy, Isly—were delightful incense to that mean shadow of a real patriotism, French Chauvinism. He was director of the French school of art at Rome from 1827 till 1835, he travelled in Algiers and Russia, and down till his death at Paris, January 17, 1863, honours were heaped upon him. See Durande, Joseph, Carle, et Horace Vernet (Paris, 1865).