Carle Vernet

Template:Short description Template:Multiple issues Template:Infobox person Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, better known as Carle Vernet (Template:IPA; 14 August 1758Template:Snd27 November 1836), was a French painter, the youngest child of Claude-Joseph Vernet and the father of Horace Vernet.

Biography

File:Napoleon.Wagram.jpg

The Battle of Wagram; colored litho by Carle Vernet and Jacques Swebach

Vernet was born in Bordeaux. At the age of five, he showed an extraordinary passion for drawing horses, but went through the regular academic course as a pupil of his father and of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié. Strangely, after winning the Prix de Rome (1782), he seemed to lose interest in the occupation, and his father had to recall him from Rome to prevent his entering a monastery.<ref name="EB1911">{{#if: |

   |{{#ifeq: Vernet |
                |{{#ifeq: |
                             |
                             |
                           }}
                |
               }}
  }}{{#ifeq:  |
   |{{#ifeq: y |
                                    |This article
                                    |One or more of the preceding sentences
                                   }} incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
  }}{{#invoke:template wrapper|{{#if:|list|wrap}}|_template=cite EB1911
   |_exclude=footnote, inline, noicon, no-icon, noprescript, no-prescript, _debug

   | noicon=1
  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}}</ref>

In his "Triumph of Aemilius Paulus", Vernet broke with tradition and drew the horse with the forms he had learnt from nature in stables and riding schools.<ref name="EB1911"/> His hunting pieces, races, landscapes, and work as a lithographer were also very popular.

Carle's sister was executed by the guillotine during the Revolution. After this, he gave up art.

File:Le four à plâtre, à Montmartre - Carle Vernet - Chaalis.jpg

The Plaster Kiln at Montmartre

When he again began to produce under the French Directory (1795–1799), his style had changed radically. He started drawing in minute detail battles and campaigns to glorify Napoleon.Template:Citation needed His drawings of Napoleon's Italian campaign won acclaim as did the Battle of Marengo, and for his Morning of Austerlitz Napoleon awarded him the Legion of Honour,<ref name="EB1911"/> and Louis XVIII awarded him the Order of Saint Michael. Afterwards he excelled in hunting scenes and depictions of horses.

He produced a painting Capture of Pamplona celebrating the 1823 Siege of Pamplona which he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824.

In addition to being a painter and lithographer, Carle Vernet was an avid horseman. Just days before his death at the age of seventy-eight, he was seen racing as if he were a sprightly young man.

He died in Paris.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Literary references

In Maria Wirtemberska's novel Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition (1816; English translation 2001, by Ursula Phillips), it is said that a view that is being described merits the talent of Vernet, who as the writer explains in her own footnote was a sea painter.

Selected works

• Arrival of Emigres on the French Coast with the Duchess of Berry
  Arrival of Emigres on the French Coast with the Duchess of Berry
• A Mameluke Leading His Horse
  A Mameluke Leading His Horse
• Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino
  Napoleon at the Battle of Borodino
• Un Incroyable, two French dandies, one bearing what may be the first recorded top hat
  Un Incroyable, two French dandies, one bearing what may be the first recorded top hat
• Capture of Pamplona, 17 September 1823 (1824)
  Capture of Pamplona, 17 September 1823 (1824)

See also

• Les Neuf Sœurs
• Felice Cerruti Bauduc