Lot 1298 Dα

The seal on the back of this river landscape not only allows it to be attributed to the oeuvre of Claude Joseph Vernet but also helps to reconstruct its provenance. The artist listed all of his orders in his “livre de raison”, or book of commissions. In 1745 he noted an order for four paintings placed by an “Anglois”, or Englishman.
In the early 1740s, the studio of the French artist, who moved to Rome in 1734 and married an English woman named Virginia Parker, became an obligatory stopping place for English gentlemen embarking on the “Grand Tour”. In the years following 1745, Vernet painted over 80 works for English patrons whilst living in Rome. His paintings were so sought-after in London that some patrons requested two, four, or even six of his works.
The present canvas is one such example from a series of four works depicting two harbour and two landscape scenes painted at different times of the day. The four works were later discovered in the collection of the 2nd Baron Northwick, entitled as follows: “Italian Harbour in the Morning Mist”, “Italian Harbour at Sunset”, “Shipwreck”, and “Water Landscape with Fishermen and Rocky Coastline” (the present work).
Vernet paints a river landscape in the late afternoon. In the foreground we see men pulling figures in a rowing boat onto the shore, and a large overhanging rock brackets the scene on the right whilst in the centre, the viewer's eye is led out onto an idyllic landscape of criss-crossing rivers. Onlookers on the banks, some wearing the costume of Neapolitan “lazzarone”, watch the joyful anglers and fishermen returning with their boats. Vernet bathes his landscape in a warm light, accentuating the peaceful atmosphere of the scene. The artist was so successful in capturing moods and light conditions in these motifs that the French King Louis XV summoned him to Paris to paint his famous French Harbours series in 1753.
The present work has previously been housed in several famous English collections, including that of John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick (1769-1859), one of the great connoisseurs of the 19th century. He purchased Thirlestaine House in Cheltenham in 1838 in order to house his collection of over 1500 works of art. The present canvas hung with its “sibling works” in his so-called “Venetian Room”. The collection was opened to the public every afternoon and housed works by Giotto, Leonardo, Raphael, Dürer, Titian, and Caravaggio. Northwick died unmarried in 1859 and his descendants sold the house and his collection in an auction lasting 22 days.
The four Vernets thence entered the collection of the Sawbridge-Erle-Drax family, whose coat-of-arms is depicted in the seal on the back of the work along with the motto “mort en droit”. The four works were separated during the sale of their collection in 1910, and this canvas was purchased by the Brunner Gallery in Paris, where it was included in their sales catalogue of that year with details on its provenance. From there, the work then travelled to the USA, where it was re-sold to the Aquavella Galleries from the collection of Harry Goldings in New York. As shown by the invoice included with the piece, it was then sold to an Italian collector.
Two of the “sibling works” are illustrated in Ingersoll-Smouse, p. 46, cat. no. 123-126. All compositions share the same low horizon line and narrow foreground. The painting “Harbour in the Morning Mist” features the same prominent rocky outcrop on the left as the present work.