Claude Joseph Vernet (after), The Night A Seaport By Moonlight Early XIXth

Claude Joseph Vernet (after), The night a seaport by moonlight, oil on canvas, restorations and relining, Original Louvre Museum, Vernet 1771, 1773 at the Salon. Wooden frame and gilded stucco (108x80cm) This soothing seascape by Claude-Joseph Vernet depicting the calm of a port at nightfall is a cover of one of his compositions, exhibited at the Salon of 1773 and intended for the Countess du Barry for her castle of Louveciennes. Madame du Barry had commissioned for her château a series of four seascapes evoking four times of the day: Le Matin, les baigneuses (Louvre Museum); Le Midi (now extinct), Le Soir, sunset, return from fishing (deposited by the Louvre Museum in the Senate, Victor and Hélène Lyon donation, 1961), and La nuit, un port de mer au clair de lune (Louvre Museum), of which ours is a 19th century copy. The four seascapes of the Countess produced between 1771 and 1773 had been seized during the Revolution before winning, for some of them, public collections.