Horace Vernet

Horace Vernet studied at Beaux-Arts de Paris. Training under François-André Vincent is recorded. Jules Breton, Joseph Simon Volmar and Ignace-François Bonhommé are recorded as having studied under Horace Vernet. The recorded working language is French. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are history, landscape and portrait. Positions recorded include director of the French Academy in Rome. Works named in the authority record are The battle of Jena, October 14, 1806, The Battle of Bouvines and Battle of Fontenoy, 11th of May 1745. Work by Horace Vernet is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Victoria, Nationalmuseum and National Gallery of Canada. Distinctions recorded are Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts order, Knight in the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, resident at the Villa Medici and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour.

• Name — Horace Vernet • Born — 30 June 1789 • Birthplace — Paris, France • Died — 17 January 1863 • Place of death — Paris, France • Known for — * Painter • draughtsman • lithographer • Movement — Orientalist • Birth Name — Émile Jean-Horace Vernet

• Illustration — Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops, 1831

Vernet was born to painter Carle Vernet, who was himself a son of Claude-Joseph Vernet, also a painter. He was born in the Paris Louvre, while his parents were staying there during the French Revolution. Vernet quickly developed a disdain for the high-minded seriousness of academic French art work which was distinguished by art influenced by Classicism, and decided to paint subjects taken mostly from contemporary life. During his early career, when Napoleon Bonaparte was in power, he began depicting the French soldier in a more familiar, vernacular manner rather than in an idealized, Davidian fashion; he was just twenty when he exhibited the Taking of an Entrenched Camp Some other of his paintings that represent French soldiers in a more direct, less idealizing style, include Dog of the Regiment, Trumpeter's Horse, and Death of Poniatowski.

• Illustration — Self-Portrait with Pipe, 1835 • Illustration — Street Fighting on Rue Soufflot, Paris, June 25, 1848 He gained recognition during the Bourbon Restoration for a series of battle paintings commissioned by the duc d'Orleans, the future King Louis Philippe I. Critics marvelled at the incredible speed with which he painted. Many of his paintings made during this early phase of his career were "noted for their historical accuracy as well as their charged landscapes". Examples of paintings in this style include his Four Battles series: The Battle of Jemappes (1821), The Battle of Montmirail (1822), The Battle of Hanau (1824), and The Battle of Valmy (1826). Enjoying equal favour with the court and with the opposition, he was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome, from 1829 to 1835. Over the course of his long career, Horace Vernet was honoured with dozens of important commissions. King Louis-Philippe was one of his most prolific patrons, and the whole of the Constantine room at the Palace of Versailles was decorated by him, in the short space of three years. The King requested that he paint a gallery dedicated to the "fruits of colonization". At the time, France was colonizing Algeria through war, and claiming it to be part of their mission civilisatrice, or their "civilizing mission". In a neoclassical style, reflecting the Roman colonization in North Africa about 2000 years before, Horace painted pictures of French non-commissioned officers training Algerian soldiers, French engineers building Algerian roads, and French soldiers tilling Algerian fields.

His depictions of Algerian battles, such as the Capture of the Smahla and the Capture of Constantine, were well received by other French people, as they were vivid depictions of their army in the heat of battle. After the fall of the July Monarchy during the Revolution of 1848, Vernet discovered a new patron in Napoléon III of France. He continued to paint representations of the heroic French army during the Second Empire and maintained his commitment to and realistic way. He accompanied the French Army during the Crimean War, producing several paintings, truthfully including one of the Battle of the Alma, which was not as well received as his earlier paintings. One well known and possibly apocryphal anecdote maintains that when Vernet was asked to remove a certain obnoxious general from one of his paintings, he replied, "I am a painter of history, sire, and I will not violate the truth", hence demonstrating his fidelity to representing war. Vernet also developed an interest in daguerreotype photography. He took photographs in Egypt as reference material for his paintings, and during a stop at Malta in March 1840 while en route to Egypt, he took the earliest known photographs of the island at Fort Manoel. Today these early photographs are believed to be lost. His nephew Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, also a painter and his pupil, wrote Voyage d'Horace Vernet en Orient (2 volumes, 1844). Vernet died in his hometown of Paris in 1863.

• Illustration — Portrait of Roustam Raza, 1810 • Illustration — The Battle of Somosierra, 1816 • Illustration — The Death of Prince Poniatowski, 1816 • Illustration — The Battle of Tolosa, 1817 • Illustration — Portrait of the Duke of Orleans, 1818 • Illustration — The Dog of the Regiment Wounded, 1819 • Illustration — The Wounded Trumpeter, 1819 • Illustration — Siege of Saragossa, 1819 • Illustration — Portrait of the Général Marquis de Talhouët-Roy, 1819 • Illustration — Massacre of the Mamelukes at Cairo, 1819 • Illustration — The Barrier of Clichy, 1820 • Illustration — Portrait of Marshal Saint-Cyr, 1821 • Illustration — Napoleon's Tomb, 1821 • Illustration — The Battle of Jemappes, 1821 • Illustration — The Artist's Studio, 1821 • Illustration — Vesuvius Erupting, 1822 • Illustration — Plague in Barcelona, 1822 • Illustration — Portrait of Pablo Morillo, 1822 • Illustration — Joseph Vernet Tied to a Mast During a Storm, 1822 • Illustration — Allan M'Aulay, 1823 • Illustration — The Quarry, 1823 • Illustration — Napoleon in Charleroi, 1823 • Illustration — Portrait of Théodore Géricault, 1823 • Illustration — Conrad the Corsair, 1824 • Illustration — Duck Shooting, 1824 • Illustration — Portrait of the Duke of Angoulême, 1824 • Illustration — The Battle of Montmirail, 1824 • Illustration — The Battle of Hanau, 1824 • Illustration — Napoleon Bids Farewell to His Guard, 1824 • Illustration — The Crossing of the Arcole Bridge, 1826 • Illustration — The Battle of Valmy, 1826 • Illustration — Pope Julius II ordering Bramante and Michelangelo to design St Peter's Basilica, 1827 • Illustration — Edith Recovering Harold's Body after the Battle of Hastings, 1827 • Illustration — The Battle of Bouvines, 1827 • Illustration — Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1828 • Illustration — The Brigand Betrayed, 1828 • Illustration — The Battle of Fontenoy, 1828 • Illustration — Pope Pius VIII brought to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, 1829 • Illustration — Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1829 • Illustration — Portrait of Louise Vernet, 1830 • Illustration — The Polish Prometheus, 1831 • Illustration — Judith et Holopherne, 1831 • Illustration — Study of Olympe Pelissier as Judith, 1831 • Illustration — Portrait of Marshal Molitor, 1831 • Illustration — The Duke of Orleans Leaving the Palais-Royal, 1832 • Illustration — Raphael at the Vatican, 1832 • Illustration — Self-Portrait in Rome, 1832 • Illustration — Hunting in the Pontine Marshes, 1833 • Illustration — Portrait of Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1833 • Illustration — Carlo Alberto of Savoy, 1834 • Illustration — The Battle of Friedland, 1835 • Illustration — The Battle of Wagram, 1835 • Illustration — The Battle of Jena, 1836 • Illustration — The Slave Market, 1836 • Illustration — The Lion Hunt, 1836 • Illustration — The Siege of Constantine, 1838 • Illustration — Napoleon at the Tuileries, 1838 • Illustration — An Algerian Lady Hawking, 1839 • Illustration — The Ballad of Lenore, 1839 • Illustration — Battle of the Tagus, 1840 • Illustration — The Siege of Antwerp, 1840 • Illustration — The Battle of Habrah, 1840 • Illustration — Judah and Tamar, 1840 • Illustration — Episode of the Mexican expedition in 1838, 1841 • Illustration — Arabs Travelling in the Desert, 1843 • Illustration — Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem, 1844 • Illustration — Louis Philippe and His Sons, 1846 • Illustration — The Battle of Isly, 1846 • Illustration — The Angel of Death, 1851 • Illustration — The Battle of the Alma, 1856 • Illustration — Zouaves at the Malakoff, 1856 • Illustration — Portrait of Pierre Bosquet, 1857 • Illustration — Portrait of Marshal Canrobert, 1857 • Illustration — The Taking of the Malakoff Redoubt, 1858 • Illustration — A Wounded Zouave, 1858 • Illustration — Portrait of Marshal MacMahon, 1860

In Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims to be related to Vernet, stating, "My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist"; it is generally assumed that this individual is Émile Jean-Horace Vernet, because Horace was only 65 years older than Sherlock Holmes while the other Vernets lived much before. The Holmes-Vernet connection is also central to the plot of Laurie R. King's 2024 novel, The Lantern's Dance.