EMILE - JEAN - HORACE VERNET
Paris 1789 - Paris 1863
Horace Vernet was the grandson of the eighteenth century landscape painter Joseph Vernet and the equestrian and military artist Carle Vernet. Although much influenced by the latter, he far exceeded his range of subjects and artistic talents. Indeed, he was something of a prodigy with both an inventive mind and speedy brush. A romantic Bonapartist, he perpetuated the legend of Napoleon's genius long after his fellow countrymen had tired of the carnage brought about by the Emperor's megalomaniac ambitions.
Vernet was born in his parent's residence in the Louvre just six months before his grandfather's death. He was immediately exposed to the turmoil of the Revolution and at three years old his family fled their home to take refuge in the home of the painter Moreau, his father carrying the young Horace in his arms. Initially a student of his father, Horace's exposure to the artistic milieu of Paris in the late 1790's and early 1800's affected both his politics and choice of subjects. His earliest works were close in style to his father's, paintings and drawings of battles and equestrian portraits. Nonetheless his first real commercial success was with the attractive but trivial drawings he did for the Journal des Dames et des Modes on which he worked between 1811 and 1817. In 1813 he received a commission from the Emperor to paint ten portraits of horses from the Imperial stables and in 1814 elegant portraits of M. and Mme Le Noir. With similar portraits making up much of his output, he also painted contemporary battles (such as the Battle of Somo-Sierra, 1816, Warsaw, National Museum) and romantic historical subjects (such as the Battle of Tolosa for which this painting is a sketch).
In 1820 Horace went to Rome where he produced one of his greatest works, The Start of the Race of the Loose Horses (the same subject painted by his close friend Gericault), and on his return visited David in his Brussels exile. His Bonapartist leanings reaffirmed, he began The Clichy Barricade - Defense of Paris March 30, 1814 (1820, Paris, Louvre), a tribute to the defense of the city against the British, Prussians and Russians in the last days before Napoleon's surrender. The painting includes a gallery of portraits, many of whose subjects were known to the artist, present on this occasion as a second-lieutenant in the National Guard (it was for his gallantry there that he was given the Légion d'Honneur by the King in December 1814). This work cannot be considered an "eye-witness" account, however, but rather a superb romantic portrayal of heroism and suffering.
