Vernet’s Seascapes: From Tranquillity to Tempest

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at pendant pictures by Claude Joseph Vernet in their collection. 

Francesa Whitlum-Cooper, Myojin Nada Associate Curator for Painting 1600-1800, took us through Vernet’s career and introduced us to the two pictures from 1773, A Landscape at Sunset with Fishermen Returning with their Catch and A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas. She described the detail in them and their place in that career.

She also explained how they had been saved for the nation in 2003 but why it took till last year for them to be displayed in the gallery. An interesting story of how the export licence scheme can work and the agreements that came be come to.

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