GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Claude-Joseph Vernet made his reputation with Mediterranean port scenes, and mountain landscapes such as this are rare in his oeuvre. This one was intended to serve as the companion to an equally grand port scene, now in a private collection. Both paintings were originally commissioned by the British collector Lord Shelburne, later the Marquess of Lansdowne. The artist recorded the specifics of the Lansdowne commission in his account book in 1774, noting that the patron wished for the first painting to show "a rustic country with rocks, high mountains, rushing streams, waterfalls, tree trunks." Vernet's works were highly prized and had a profound influence on the Romantic school of landscape painting in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Excerpt from
Bonnie Pitman, ed., "A Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 167.
NOTES
Created 1775
Checked Piction
Heather MacDonald, DMA label copy, 2011
Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm is one of a pair of monumental landscapes commissioned by the Marquess of Lansdowne for his famous collection at Berkeley Square in London. Originally, this “sublime” evocation of the terror associated with the destructive power of a violent storm was meant to find its complement in a “beautiful” sunset harbor scene, but the two paintings were separated in the early 19th century and the pendant to the DMA painting is now in a private collection. The drama of this large-scale landscape with thundering waterfall, craggy coast, and ominous storm clouds anticipates the emotional intensity of romanticism, which reached its height in the first half of the 19th century.
VERNET- SUBLIME:
Another aspect of French eighteenth-century art that is often forgotten is the sublime landscape, which depicts nature as dangerous and threatening—not a benign view of the world. A shipwreck in the eighteenth century was like an automobile accident today. It was a real danger of travel. Both the DMA and Rosenberg collections included great landscapes by Claude-Joseph Vernet. A Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm (fig. 11) was acquired for the DMA by Steven A. Nash, its former deputy director and chief curator. It’s one of Vernet’s masterpieces and certainly one of his very greatest pictures in this country. It shows a tremendous land storm, with great cracks of lightning in the sky and a huge storm sweeping down. The river is rising in a scary way. The fishermen are desperately trying to pull their nets out and get away. A woman is shown with a child over her shoulders telling the people to move onto high ground. The group is very reluctant. The mule won’t move, despite people beating it, pulling it, trying to get it up to higher ground as the waters are rising. Vernet specialized in landscapes and marine paintings, particularly scenes of storm and strife. In the Rosenberg Collection, too, there was formerly a dramatic shipwreck titled A Storm with a Shipwreck by a Fortress, a Castaway in the Foreground (fig. 12). [9] (21-22)
[9] This work was sold from the Rosenberg Collection as Claude-Joseph Vernet, A Storm with a Shipwreck by a Fortress, a Castaway in the Foreground, 1769, oil on canvas, Christie’s, New York, January 26, 2005, lot 229.
Philip Conisbee, "Michael L. Rosenberg's Eighteenth Century," 11-23, in French Art of the Eigteenth Century: The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, Heather MacDonald ed. Dallas Museum of Art and the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, distributed by Yale University press, New Haven, CT, 2016.
The towering mountains, thundering waterfall, and ominous storm clouds of Vernet’s large-scale landscape evoke the overwhelming and even terrifying power of nature. Eighteenth-century viewers would have associated this scene with the “sublime” power of the Almighty. Moreover, the eighteenth century audience was also convinced that a special bond existed between painting and music. They believed that music could communicate in visual terms, and that the dramatic events of a painting could be heard as well as seen. Sounds were associated with colors. Qualities of light could be heard in music as they were seen in paintings.
• Obtain a copy of one of the following musical selections and listen for relationships to Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm:
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, 4th Movement
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hippolyte et Arcie, Overture
Joseph Haydn, Selections from The Creation
• Separate viewers into two groups, THE WORLD OF PEOPLE and THE WORLD OF NATURE. Tell each group to list what belongs to them in this painting. Give the following instructions: choose to be someone or something on your list; put your body in the position of the person or thing you choose; imagine what this person or thing is feeling. Tell everyone that People and Nature are now going to talk to each other. Pair up someone from THE WORLD OF PEOPLE with THE WORLD OF NATURE and let the conversations begin. Finally, consider the question, “What did you discover about this landscape painting?”
• Roll up a piece of paper to make a tube and look at the painting as if through a telescope. What do your investigations tell you?
• Read about the artist and his world.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTWORK:
In the eighteenth century, landscape painting was generally considered merely decorative and decidedly secondary to religious and mythological subjects. Vernet’s extraordinarily successful career was surely an exception to this. Sponsored by a local collector in his native Avignon, Vernet worked in Rome from 1734 to 1753, and his patrons included members of the British and French nobility whom he met during their travels on the Grand Tour of Europe. Vernet brought together his fascination with the careful observation of nature with the great landscape tradition of the previous century—the idealizing poetry of Claude Lorrain, the drama of Salvator Rosa, and the grandeur of Nicolas Poussin. Indeed, Vernet’s grand visions of nature claim a pivotal position in the great tradition of landscape painting.
Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm is one of a pair of monumental landscapes commissioned by the Marquis of Lansdowne for his famous collection at Berkeley Square in London. The two paintings focus on contrasting meteorological extremes: one presents a tranquil harbor at sunset, the other the terrifying drama of a storm. Vernet’s cultivated patron would have understood these images in terms of the aesthetic themes of the late eighteenth century: one a paradigm of the “beautiful,” and the Dallas picture an awe-inspiring vision of the “sublime.”
The dramatic presentation of thundering waterfall, craggy coast, and glowering storm clouds anticipates the emotional intensity of romanticism. The legacy of Vernet’s painting can be traced within the Dallas Museum of Art’s collections in works such as Thomas Cole’s Landscape—The Fountain of Vaucluse and Frederic Church’s The Icebergs.
— Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art at the DMA, 1997 Guide
From European masterworks teaching packet, page 9-10
Vernet, Claude-Joseph (French, 1714-1789)
Cultures
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Place of origin: France (nation): TGN: 1000070
Process/materials
Historical periods
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264295881: UMO Vernet's Lansdowne Landscapes: A Reunion 200 Years in the Making
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WEB RESOURCES
- Dallas Museum of Art~Check out this press release about reuniting two Vernet landscapes for the first time in over 200 years.
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC~Read a biography of Claude-Joseph Vernet from the NGA.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Learn more about Romanticism from the Met.
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General Description
Claude-Joseph Vernet made his reputation with Mediterranean port scenes, and mountain landscapes such as this are rare in his oeuvre. This one was intended to serve as the companion to an equally grand port scene, now in a private collection. Both paintings were originally commissioned by the British collector Lord Shelburne, later the Marquess of Lansdowne. The artist recorded the specifics of the Lansdowne commission in his account book in 1774, noting that the patron wished for the first painting to show "a rustic country with rocks, high mountains, rushing streams, waterfalls, tree trunks." Vernet's works were highly prized and had a profound influence on the Romantic school of landscape painting in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Excerpt from
Bonnie Pitman, ed., "A Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 167.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Dallas Museum of Art~Check out this press release about reuniting two Vernet landscapes for the first time in over 200 years.
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC~Read a biography of Claude-Joseph Vernet from the NGA.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Learn more about Romanticism from the Met.
Notes
Created 1775
Checked Piction
Heather MacDonald, DMA label copy, 2011
Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm is one of a pair of monumental landscapes commissioned by the Marquess of Lansdowne for his famous collection at Berkeley Square in London. Originally, this “sublime” evocation of the terror associated with the destructive power of a violent storm was meant to find its complement in a “beautiful” sunset harbor scene, but the two paintings were separated in the early 19th century and the pendant to the DMA painting is now in a private collection. The drama of this large-scale landscape with thundering waterfall, craggy coast, and ominous storm clouds anticipates the emotional intensity of romanticism, which reached its height in the first half of the 19th century.
VERNET- SUBLIME:
Another aspect of French eighteenth-century art that is often forgotten is the sublime landscape, which depicts nature as dangerous and threatening—not a benign view of the world. A shipwreck in the eighteenth century was like an automobile accident today. It was a real danger of travel. Both the DMA and Rosenberg collections included great landscapes by Claude-Joseph Vernet. A Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm (fig. 11) was acquired for the DMA by Steven A. Nash, its former deputy director and chief curator. It’s one of Vernet’s masterpieces and certainly one of his very greatest pictures in this country. It shows a tremendous land storm, with great cracks of lightning in the sky and a huge storm sweeping down. The river is rising in a scary way. The fishermen are desperately trying to pull their nets out and get away. A woman is shown with a child over her shoulders telling the people to move onto high ground. The group is very reluctant. The mule won’t move, despite people beating it, pulling it, trying to get it up to higher ground as the waters are rising. Vernet specialized in landscapes and marine paintings, particularly scenes of storm and strife. In the Rosenberg Collection, too, there was formerly a dramatic shipwreck titled A Storm with a Shipwreck by a Fortress, a Castaway in the Foreground (fig. 12). [9] (21-22)
[9] This work was sold from the Rosenberg Collection as Claude-Joseph Vernet, A Storm with a Shipwreck by a Fortress, a Castaway in the Foreground, 1769, oil on canvas, Christie’s, New York, January 26, 2005, lot 229.
Philip Conisbee, "Michael L. Rosenberg's Eighteenth Century," 11-23, in French Art of the Eigteenth Century: The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, Heather MacDonald ed. Dallas Museum of Art and the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, distributed by Yale University press, New Haven, CT, 2016.
The towering mountains, thundering waterfall, and ominous storm clouds of Vernet’s large-scale landscape evoke the overwhelming and even terrifying power of nature. Eighteenth-century viewers would have associated this scene with the “sublime” power of the Almighty. Moreover, the eighteenth century audience was also convinced that a special bond existed between painting and music. They believed that music could communicate in visual terms, and that the dramatic events of a painting could be heard as well as seen. Sounds were associated with colors. Qualities of light could be heard in music as they were seen in paintings.
• Obtain a copy of one of the following musical selections and listen for relationships to Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm:
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, 4th Movement
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hippolyte et Arcie, Overture
Joseph Haydn, Selections from The Creation
• Separate viewers into two groups, THE WORLD OF PEOPLE and THE WORLD OF NATURE. Tell each group to list what belongs to them in this painting. Give the following instructions: choose to be someone or something on your list; put your body in the position of the person or thing you choose; imagine what this person or thing is feeling. Tell everyone that People and Nature are now going to talk to each other. Pair up someone from THE WORLD OF PEOPLE with THE WORLD OF NATURE and let the conversations begin. Finally, consider the question, “What did you discover about this landscape painting?”
• Roll up a piece of paper to make a tube and look at the painting as if through a telescope. What do your investigations tell you?
• Read about the artist and his world.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTWORK:
In the eighteenth century, landscape painting was generally considered merely decorative and decidedly secondary to religious and mythological subjects. Vernet’s extraordinarily successful career was surely an exception to this. Sponsored by a local collector in his native Avignon, Vernet worked in Rome from 1734 to 1753, and his patrons included members of the British and French nobility whom he met during their travels on the Grand Tour of Europe. Vernet brought together his fascination with the careful observation of nature with the great landscape tradition of the previous century—the idealizing poetry of Claude Lorrain, the drama of Salvator Rosa, and the grandeur of Nicolas Poussin. Indeed, Vernet’s grand visions of nature claim a pivotal position in the great tradition of landscape painting.
Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm is one of a pair of monumental landscapes commissioned by the Marquis of Lansdowne for his famous collection at Berkeley Square in London. The two paintings focus on contrasting meteorological extremes: one presents a tranquil harbor at sunset, the other the terrifying drama of a storm. Vernet’s cultivated patron would have understood these images in terms of the aesthetic themes of the late eighteenth century: one a paradigm of the “beautiful,” and the Dallas picture an awe-inspiring vision of the “sublime.”
The dramatic presentation of thundering waterfall, craggy coast, and glowering storm clouds anticipates the emotional intensity of romanticism. The legacy of Vernet’s painting can be traced within the Dallas Museum of Art’s collections in works such as Thomas Cole’s Landscape—The Fountain of Vaucluse and Frederic Church’s The Icebergs.
— Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art at the DMA, 1997 Guide
From European masterworks teaching packet, page 9-10
Vernet, Claude-Joseph (French, 1714-1789)
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: France (nation): TGN: 1000070
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
264295881: UMO Vernet's Lansdowne Landscapes: A Reunion 200 Years in the Making
VIDEO ASSETS
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