Musées de Langres – Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot – Musée d'Art et d'Histoire

Joseph Vernet was a celebrated artist in his day, and was especially renowned for his landscape and seascape paintings. In 1753, he returned to France after a long period in Italy. He was a prolific artist, having to meet the demand spurred by his popularity. In 1766, Vernet delivered two oval paintings to Madame la Présidente de Bandeville (widow of Pierre-François Doublet, Marquis de Bandeville): La source abondante (The Bountiful Spring) and Les occupations du rivage (Seashore Occupations). There are two versions of this pair of paintings, and the painting we see here probably belongs to the second. It has the same date as, and is identical to, the painting presented at the Salon de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1767, as part of a set of seven landscapes.

After visiting this Salon, Diderot took a whimsical approach to art criticism. Writing on these paintings, he pretended to move on from his critique of Vernet’s works: “I wrote the name of this artist at the top of my page and was about to describe his works, when I left for a seaside spot celebrated for the beauty of its sites […]; I was walking with the teacher of the children of the house […] towards the finest sites in the world. My plan is to describe them to you”. Diderot then goes on to describe this walk, which is in fact an imaginary stroll through Vernet’s landscapes paintings.