Paintings
All of the paintings are oil on canvas, with the same dimensions of 165 by 263 cm.
The Views of the Ports of France (French: Vues des ports de France) are a series of oil paintings on canvas by French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet, made between 1754 and 1765 to answer a requirement by King Louis XV. Representing ten harbours, they were meant to document and promote commerce and naval service.
In 1753, Abel-François Poisson de Vandières suggested to King Louis XV that Vernet realise a series of paintings documenting and exalting the harbours of France. The Crown ordered 24 paintings, each paid 6000 Livres tournois, with detailed specifications, such as the foreground representing the activities of the local industry.
Between 1753 and 1765, Vernet traveled to ten of the harbours (Marseille, Bandol, Toulon, Antibes, Sète, Bordeaux, Bayonne, La Rochelle, Rochefort and Dieppe), and eventually completed 15 of the intended 24 views. The paintings were exposed at the Salon de peinture et de sculpture, with long descriptions detailing their technical aspects. [1] From 1758, engraved reproductions of the paintings were made by Charles-Nicolas Cochin and Jacques-Philippe Le Bas and published; they proved popular and were reprinted several times. [1]
The series consolidated Vernet's status as a marine painter, and from then on his paintings were highly priced, "worth their weigh in gold" according to Pierre-Jean Mariette, with patrons such as Catherine II of Russia. [2]
In 1791, Jean-François Hue, himself a student of Vernet's, was tasked to complete the series. Between 1792 and 1798, he completed six paintings representing harbours of Bretagne, known as the Vues des ports de Bretagne . In 1793, the Ports de France were amongst the first works exposed at the "Central Museum of Arts", which would become the Louvre Museum.
In 1943, the State Secretary of the Navy requested that the paintings be attached to the Musée national de la Marine; thirteen of the paintings ended up transferring, while the last two remained at the Louvre. The paintings were all shown together in 1976. [1]
All of the paintings are oil on canvas, with the same dimensions of 165 by 263 cm.
The Musée national de la Marine is a maritime museum located in the Palais de Chaillot, Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It has annexes at Brest, Port-Louis, Rochefort, and Toulon. The permanent collection originates in a collection that dates back to Louis XV of France.
Auguste-Barthélemy Glaize (1807–1893) was a French Romantic painter of history paintings and genre paintings.
Louis Béroud was a French painter of the late 19th and early 20th century. Some of his paintings are visible at the Musée Carnavalet and The Louvre in Paris. On 22 August 1911, Béroud came to The Louvre to sketch his painting Mona Lisa au Louvre but where the famous La Joconde, by Leonardo da Vinci, should have stood, he found four iron pegs. Béroud contacted the section head of the guards, who thought the painting was being photographed for marketing purposes. A few hours later, Béroud checked back with the section head of the museum, and it was confirmed that the Mona Lisa was not with the photographers. The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid in investigation of the theft.
Augustin Blondel de Gagny was a French connoisseur of the arts and a collector whose series of Paris auction sales, which took place soon after his death were high-water marks of the history of collecting in 18th-century France. Paintings and sculptures that passed through Blondel de Gagny's collection are dispersed in many of the world's great museums. The prints from his collection are less easily traced.
Joseph Fortuné Séraphin Layraud was a French painter. There is no complete clearance as to the birth' and the death' dates. Some sources refer to 1833–1913. His range included historical scenes and figures, religious and mythological subjects, landscapes, and portraits of contemporaries.
Alfred Guillou was a French painter of Breton heritage.
Pieter Casteels II or Pieter Casteels the Younger was a Flemish painter mainly known for his imaginary Italianate landscapes and views of harbours.
Venus Anadyomene is a painting by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It is now held at the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. It is a female nude of the Venus Anadyomene type, showing the goddess Venus rising from the sea.
Henri Guinier was a French portrait and landscape painter.
Jean-Édouard Dargent, known as Yan' Dargent and in his later years Yann Dargent, was born in Saint-Servais on 15 October 1824 and died in Paris on 19 November 1899. He was a French painter and illustrator. Most of his paintings depicted Brittany.
Louis-Gabriel Moreau was a French graphic artist and landscape painter.
Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Brun was a French painter, a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel, Carolus-Duran and Félix Bracquemond. He is especially known for his many marine paintings and a collection of watercolors on dark wash representing orchids.
Cupid Disarmed is a c. 1715 oil-on-canvas painting, usually but not definitively attributed to Antoine Watteau. It is one of eight paintings kept by Watteau's friend and protector Jean de Jullienne until the latter's death in 1766. Benoît Audran engraved it in 1727 and described and reproduced it in an inventory of the Jullienne collection in 1756. After Jullienne's death the art dealer Boileau bought it for Jean-Baptiste de Montullé, Jullienne's executor.
The Battle of Taillebourg, 21 July 1242 is an 1837 painting of the Battle of Taillebourg by Eugène Delacroix, one of 33 huge works commissioned from different artists by Louis-Philippe I for his Gallery of Battles at the Palace of Versailles, inaugurated in 1837. It still hangs there, between Horace Vernet's The Battle of Bouvines, 27 July 1214 and Charles-Philippe Larivière's The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle, 18 August 1304. It is Delacroix's only work in the Gallery.
Jean-François Hue was a French painter, known for marine and landscape paintings.
Charles-Caius Renoux was a French painter, lithographer, and illustrator. He first achieved success with paintings of medieval churches, particularly the ruins of cloisters and monasteries destroyed during the French Revolution, works for which he is still best known. Renoux also painted landscapes, large-scale battle scenes, and historical subjects, works which uniquely prepared him for the final phase of his career, the creation of spectacular dioramas, the "moving pictures" of the era. He also taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; his notable students included Narcisse Berchère and Hector Hanoteau.
Estelle de Barescut was a French painter and lithographer. She exhibited her lithographs at the Salon de Paris in 1834 and 1835, and her paintings from 1842 to 1851.
The Barrière de Clichy. Defence of Paris, 30 March 1814 is an oil on canvas painting by Horace Vernet, from 1820. It shows a battle against Russian cossacks at the barrière de Clichy.
