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Horace Vernet BiographyFrench Academic Classical painter and printmakerborn 1789 - died 1863 Also known as: Emile-Jean-Horace Vernet Student of:
François-André Vincent
(1746-1816). |
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Émile-Jean-Horace Vernet, known as Horace
Vernet, was son of Antoine-Charles-Horace
(known as 'Carle') he and grandson of
Claude-Joseph Vernet, one of the leading French
landscape artists of his period. The painter was one of the most
prolific of French military painters,
specializing in scenes of the Napoleonic
era. Horace Vernet remained an ardent Bonapartist, and
his chief work was the huge Gallery of
Battles at Versailles, painted for Louis
Philippe. A portrait of Horace Vernet Napoleon and four battlepieces by him are
in the National Gallery, London. He also did animal and
Oriental subjects. From 1828 to 1835 Horace
Vernet was
Director of the French Academy in Rome. His
sister married the costume-history painter
Paul Delaroche. |
Originality in those big Horace Vernet oil paintings was due mainly to the suppression of the main hero - as was the tradition - so that even the last of the foot-soldiers played their role in these immense compositions saturated with little scenes of equal interest. Exhibited in the Salon in 1845, the Horace Vernet painting Smalah attracted enormous crowds, although some severe criticisms: "It’s all a novel, but composed of many episodes", "the artists of battles have been transformed into reporters writing bulletins" were amonst the nicest ones. | |||||||
After depicting so many battles Horace Vernet painter seemed himself to develop a military air: brusque intonations, brushed hair, chopped words, straight bearing, enormous moustache. His numerous journeys to Algieria, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and the Crimea were not always too comfortable. In fact, Vernet took any means of transport available: ships, coaches, sleighs, horses, camels or mules. he slept under a tent or even under the stars. Horace Vernet was a mixture of an adventure seeker and an official artist and he produced an enormous amount of Horace Vernet paintings (about 500 oil paintings and, according to Lagrange, 200 lithographs). As a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, the painter had an enormous influence on the artistic bodies of the time - juries, salons and competitions - and he received numerous commissions from the State, from the upper bourgeoisie and from high ranking officers. The lithographs after his sketches and Horace Vernet paintings, widely distributed, brought him enormous fame. |
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Horace Vernet painter was however subject to numerous ferrocious attacts, both personally as well as professionally, while living and after his death. At the end of the 19th century his name seemed to be universally disliked by the official critics and encyclopaedia authors. But the retrospecive exhibitions of 1980 in Paris and Rome did a lot to rehabilitate Horace Vernet who was so strongly integrated into the political and millitary life of his time. | ||||||