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{{Short description|French painter (1789–1863)}}

factoids

| birth_place = Paris, France1863176df=y}}| death_place = Paris, France| resting_place = | education = | alma_mater =

• Painter
• draughtsman
• lithographer

{edih}| notable_works = | style = Orientalism>Orientalist| spouse = | partner = | awards = | elected = | patrons = | memorials = | website = | module = | birth_name = Émile Jean-Horace Vernet}}Émile Jean-Horace Vernet ({{IPA-fr|emil ʒɑ̃ ɔʁas vɛʁnɛ}}; 30 June 1789{{snd}}17 January 1863) more commonly known as simply Horace Vernet, was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist subjects.

Biography

File:Horace Vernet - Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops - Walters 3754.jpg|thumb|250px|left|Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal TroopsItalian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops

Early career

Vernet was born to Carle Vernet, another famous painter, who was himself a son of Claude Joseph Vernet. He was born in the Paris Louvre, while his parents were staying there during the French Revolution. Vernet quickly developed a disdain for the high-minded seriousness of academic French art work which was distinguished by art influenced by Classicism, and decided to paint subjects taken mostly from contemporary life. During his early career, when Napoleon Bonaparte was in power, he began depicting the French soldier in a more familiar, vernacular manner rather than in an idealized, Davidian fashion; he was just twenty when he exhibited the Taking of an Entrenched Camp{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Vernet|display=Vernet s.v. Émile Jean Horace Vernet|volume=27|pages=1030–1031}} Some other of his paintings that represent French soldiers in a more direct, less idealizing style, include Dog of the Regiment, Trumpeter’s Horse, and Death of Poniatowski.

Restoration France

missing image!
- Horace Vernet Adrien Nadar 1858.jpg -
Vernet in 1858

(File:Émile Jean-Horace Vernet - The Angel of Death.jpg|thumb|The Angel of Death, 1851)

missing image!
- Horace Vernet-Barricade rue Soufflot.jpg -
Street Fighting on Rue Soufflot, Paris, June 25, 1848WEB,home.wlu.edu/~patchw/His_102/images/1848_revolutions2_files/frame.htm, Washington and Lee University, Home.wlu.edu, 2012-06-11, dead,home.wlu.edu/~patchw/His_102/images/1848_revolutions2_files/frame.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20131012031500home.wlu.edu/~patchw/His_102/images/1848_revolutions2_files/frame.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20131012031500home.wlu.edu/~patchw/His_102/images/1848_revolutions2_files/frame.htm, 2013-10-12,

He gained recognition during the Bourbon Restoration for a series of battle paintings commissioned by the duc d’Orleans, the future King Louis-Philippe. Critics marvelled at the incredible speed with which he painted.Ruutz-Rees, Janet E. (Janet Emily) (1880). Horace Vernet. New York: Scribner and Welford. Many of his paintings made during this early phase of his career were “noted for their historical accuracy as well as their charged landscapes”.The Art of War[s]: Paintings of Heroes, Horrors and History – Chase Maenius Examples of paintings in this style include his Four Battles series: The Battle of Jemappes (1821), The Battle of Montmirail (1822), The Battle of Hanau (1824), and The Battle of Valmy (1826). Enjoying equal favour with the court and with the opposition, he was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome, from 1829 to 1835.Over the course of his long career, Horace Vernet was honoured with dozens of important commissions. King Louis-Philippe was one of his most prolific patrons, and the whole of the Constantine room at the Palace of Versailles was decorated by him, in the short space of three years. The King requested that he paint a gallery dedicated to the “fruits of colonization”. At the time, France was colonizing Algeria through war, and claiming it to be part of their mission civilisatrice, or their “civilizing mission”. In a neoclassical style, reflecting the Roman colonization in North Africa about 2000 years before, Horace painted pictures of French non-commissioned officers training Algerian soldiers, French engineers building Algerian roads, and French soldiers tilling Algerian fields.BOOK, Empires in the sun : the struggle for the mastery of Africa, James, Lawrence, 9781681774633, First Pegasus books hardcover, New York, 959869470, 2017, BOOK, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria, SESSIONS, JENNIFER E., 2011, Cornell University Press, 9780801456527, 1st, 10.7591/j.ctt20fw60j, By Sword and Plow,

Later career

His depictions of Algerian battles, such as the Capture of the Smahla and the Capture of Constantine, were well received by other French people, as they were vivid depictions of their army in the heat of battle. After the fall of the July Monarchy during the Revolution of 1848, Vernet discovered a new patron in Napoléon III of France. He continued to paint representations of the heroic French army during the Second Empire and maintained his commitment to and realistic way. He accompanied the French Army during the Crimean War, producing several paintings, truthfully including one of the Battle of the Alma, which was not as well received as his earlier paintings. One well known and possibly apocryphal anecdote maintains that when Vernet was asked to remove a certain obnoxious general from one of his paintings, he replied, “I am a painter of history, sire, and I will not violate the truth”, hence demonstrating his fidelity to representing war.Vernet also developed an interest in daguerreotype photography. He took photographs in Egypt as reference material for his paintings, and during a stop at Malta in March 1840 while en route to Egypt, he took the earliest known photographs of the island at Fort Manoel. Today these early photographs are believed to be lost.NEWS, Bonello, Giovanni, But who was the first Maltese photographer?,timesofmalta.com/articles/view/but-who-was-the-first-maltese-photographer.701655, Times of Malta, 10 February 2019,web.archive.org/web/20200630220058/https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/but-who-was-the-first-maltese-photographer.701655, 30 June 2020, Vernet died in his hometown of Paris in 1863.

Literary references

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter”, Holmes claims to be related to Vernet, stating, “My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist”, without further clarifying whether this is Claude-Joseph Vernet, Carle Vernet, or Horace Vernet. The Holmes-Vernet connection is also central to the plot of Laurie R. King’s 2024 novel, The Lantern’s Dance.

Gallery

File:La Barrière de Clichy. Défense de Paris, le 30 mars 1814 - Horace Vernet - Musée du Louvre Peintures RF 126.jpg|The Barrier of Clichy (1820)File:Napoleon bids farewell to his Guard at Fontainebleau on 20 April 1814 (1824), by Horace Vernet.jpg|Napoleon bids farewell to his Guard (1824)File:La Bataille du Pont d’Arcole.jpg|Napoleon at the Battle of Arcole (1826)File:Valmy Battle painting.jpg|The Battle of Valmy (1826)File:Polish Prometheus 1831.PNG|Polish Prometheus (1831)File:Vernet - 31 juillet 1830 - Louis-Philippe quitte le Palais-Royal.jpg|The Duke of Orleans leaving the Palais-Royal (1832)File:Horace Vernet 1833 HuntingInThePontineMarshes.jpg|Hunting in the Pontine Marshes (1833)File:Napoleon friedland.jpg|Napoleon at the Battle of Friedland (1835)File:Iena.jpg|The Battle of Jena (1836)File:La prise de Constantine 1837 par Horace Vernet.jpg|The Capture of Constantine (1838)File:Épisode de l’expédition du Mexique en 1838.jpg|Scene from the Mexican Expedition in 1838 (1841)File:Horace Vernet - Judith et Holopherne 01.jpg|Judith et Holopherne (1831)File:Vernet - La prise de Malakoff.jpg|The Taking of the Malakoff Redoubt (1858)File:An Algerian Lady Hawking.jpg|An Algerian Lady Hawking (1829)File:Siege of Saragossa.jpg|Siege of Saragossa (1819)File:Bramante Basilica Julius II.jpg|Pope Julius II ordering Bramante and Michelangelo to design St Peter’s Basilica (1827)File:Pie VIII porté dans la basilique de Saint-Pierre à Rome, by Horace Vernet, 1829, retouched.jpg|Pope Pius VIII brought to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome (1829)File:Plague in Barcelona (1822), by Horace Vernet.jpg|Plague in Barcelona (1822)

References

{{Reflist}}

Further reading

{{Commons category|Horace Vernet}}

• Dayot, Armand (1898). Les Vernet : Joseph—Carle—Horace. Paris: A. Magnier.
• Harkett, Daniel and Katie Hornstein, eds, (2017). Horace Vernet and the Thresholds of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England.
• Ruutz-Rees, Janet E. (Janet Emily) (1880). Horace Vernet. New York: Scribner and Welford.
• Sessions, Jennifer E. (2011), By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria. Cornell University Press.

{{French Academy in Rome directors}}{{Early French photographers}}{{Authority control (arts)}}

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