Midday: A Ship Offshore, foundering in a Storm
Claude-Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714 – Paris 1789)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1751 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
991 x 1346 mm (39 x 53 in)
Place of origin
France
Order this imageCollection
Uppark House and Garden, West Sussex
NT 138286.3
Caption
Although this set of the Four Times of Day now hangs at Uppark, along with copies of three of them by Lacroix de Marseille, the date of 1751 on both sets indicates that the Vernets were not the ones commissioned by Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh in April of that year — which were apparently never executed — but those commissioned the year before by his wife's brother, Benjamin Lethieullier. Midday depicts a ship driven onto the shore, in the kind of storm that can so quickly and treacherously get up in the Mediterranean.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Midday: A Ship Offshore, foundering in a Stormby Claude-Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714 – Paris 1789), signed on bale, on bottom left, together with merchant's marks: Joseph/ Vernet /Roma/1751. Storm and Shipwreck - Midday A sailing ship, right, capsized off a rocky coast. Figures on the shore, left, rescuing survivors. In the background a mountain. Stormy sky. From the set 'The Four Times of Day'. Gilt frame. Copy of this is in Small Drawing Room (NT/UPP/P/132c).
Provenance
Commissioned by Benjamin Lethieulllier (1728/9-1797); with Fetherstonaugh family at Uppark, and by descent; acquired by HM Treasury in 1965 in part payment of death duties and transferred to the National Trust, September 1990
Credit line
Uppark, The Fetherstonhaugh Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Joseph Vernet f Roma/1751 (signed and dated on package, bottom left)
Makers and roles
Claude-Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714 – Paris 1789) , artist
Exhibition history
In Trust for the Nation, National Gallery, London, 1995 - 1996, no.56b The Treasure Houses of Britain, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA, 1985 - 1986, no.201 Souvenirs of the Grand Tour, Wildenstein & Co., London, 1982, no.49