The Eruption Of Vesuvius At Night, Seen From Below The Ponte Della Maddalena

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 149 x 74 cm (58.7 x 29.1 in)
Signed: Signed and lower left: Chev. ier. Volaire

Provenance: M. Mounet XIXe siècle ; Ariège, C.P.; art market circa 1950 ;Private collection, France.

Literature: To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Volaire by Beck Saiello.

Volaire joined Claude Vernet's studio when the master arrived in Toulon, to paint views of the port for his masterful series, The Ports of France (Paris, Louvre and Musée de la Marine). The son, brother and uncle of artists, though artists of lesser talent, Volaire worked under Vernet for eight years; he so absorbed Vernet’s style and techniques that the young painter’s early works are often virtually indistinguishable from those of the master. Unfortunately, this injured Volaire's subsequent reputation. He has often been characterized merely as a imitator of Vernet.

It was not until Volaire journeyed to Rome in 1764, where he painted dramatic views of the eternal city and its environs, and Naples, whence he moved in 1769, that Volaire began to develop a distinctive style. During the twenty years he called Naples home, the splendid views of the erupting Vesuvius provided inspiration for Volaire, and the artist in turn inspired landscape painters from across Europe. The French painter Charles LaCroix de Marseille, the English artist Joseph Wright of Derby, the Austrian Michael Wutky, and the German Philipp Hackert, all looked to Volaire as a source. Indeed, Wright of Derby's views of extravagant and violent explosions (numbering thirty in all), with white lava shooting skywards, may never have been witnessed firsthand by the artist, who, in his few months spent in Naples, never saw anything more dramatic than lava pouring at snail’s pace down the mountain slopes. Wright of Derby’s pictures of raging flames and molten rocks almost certainly borrowed directly from Volaire, who had been an eye witness to all Vesuvius’s major eruptions since his arrival.

There is little doubt that Volaire exploited Vesuvius scenes to the full, and, to vary the views, on occasion painted eruptions that had occurred some years earlier. For eighteenth century tourists in Naples, the journey out to Portici was as obligatory as the Coliseum when in Rome. The long-serving British Minister in Naples, Sir William Hamilton (husband of the notorious Emma,) frequently conducted tours himself, and his posting at the Bourbon Court there provided him with an opportunity to study vulcanology. In a letter recounting an eruption in 1767, he wrote: “it is impossible to describe the glorious sight of a river of liquid fire, nor the effect of thousands of red-hot stones thrown up at least two hundred yards high and rolling down the side of the mountain". Another visitor, the amateur artist and collector, the Abbe de Saint-Non, wrote of the 1779 eruption: “suddenly, there sprang out of it a mass of burning stones forming, in their flight, a mass of fire with the very crater of Vesuvius at its base; as it slowly rose, it formed a fiery cylinder of prodigious height ..... The spectacle lasted for three quarters of an hour. At the same time, there came out of the top of the mountain a thick, black smoke which, because the air was so still, rose directly and reached an immeasurable height ... These [burning stones] were thrown up in so huge a number that the whole of Vesuvius, right down to the valley, seemed aflame ... Quickly, an unbearable stink of sulphur spread out over the environs. One could hear explosions that sounded like frequent artillery shots all the way to Naples.”

It isn’t surprising that these dramatic sights would have inspired visiting artists to attempt to capture the volcano’s most sensational explosions on canvas. Unlike Wright of Derby, Volaire was less interested in the scientific aspect than the theatricality of these scenes. His pictures often include small groups of figures, standing in awe of the spectacle before them, even moving for a better view; the scale of the mountain, the awesome power of its nature, overshadow and dominate the world of the small figures below.

The greatest of Volaire’s horizontal views of Vesuvius is the huge canvas commissioned in 1774 by Bergeret de Grandcourt (acquired in 1988 by the Monuments Historiques et des Sites) when, accompanied by Fragonard and probably Vincent, Grandcourt met Volaire during an excursion to Vesuvius. Recording this occasion, Grandcourt wrote: “I was with a painter named Volaire who has with superior skills captured the horror of Vesuvius, and from whom I have ordered a painting.” Similar views by Volaire are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts, and the Bergeret picture mentioned above. The artist exhibited another large painting of this, or a similar view, in the Salon de la Correspondance of 1783 but no specific identification has been made with any known painting.

The majority of Volaire's views, however, are more limited in scope than our broad panorama, which encompasses a coastal view of the mountain. The light of the red-hot rocks aflame against the night sky, reflects in the sea below, as figures marvel at the ejaculation and billowing smoke. A river of 'liquid fire', similar to that witnessed by Hamilton, streams down the mountain. Here the artist has recorded one of the most dramatic and emotive instances of nature's power; it is a testament to his skills that we too can imagine, with awe, the effect on contemporary witnesses.