16/3/23 - Acquisition - Langres, Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot - As it prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary on 1 April, the Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot in Langres is adding several new works to its collections. We will come back to each of them, starting with the pair of paintings from Joseph Vernet’s studio (ill. 1 and 2) which went for 50,400 euros (including fees) at Christie’s in Paris on 18 May 2022 thanks to the financial support of the State, the Grand Est region and the company Plastic Omnium. The two paintings join the corpus of works that were commented on by Diderot at the Salon between 1759 and 1781, an area of the collections that the museum intends to gradually strengthen.
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- 1. Workshop of Claude Joseph Vernet (1714 -1789)
La Source abondante (title after the print by Le Bas), 1766
Oil on canvas - 49 x 39 cm
Langres, House of Enlightenment Denis Diderot
Photo: Christie’s - See the image in its page
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- 2. Workshop of Claude Joseph Vernet (1714 -1789)
Les Occupations du rivage (title after the print by Le Bas), 1766
Oil on canvas - 49 x 39 cm
Langres, House of Enlightenment Denis Diderot
Photo: Christie’s - See the image in its page
Although La Source abondante and Les Occupations du rivage were indeed commented on by Diderot at the Salon of 1767 in his famous Promenade Vernet, the two paintings that join Langres are probably not the pair that was presented there. As Olivier Caumont, Director of the Culture Department of the City of Langres and curator of its museums, points out in his detailed description of the works [1] -, an identical pair, also signed and dated 1766, executed in Vernet’s workshop, without it being possible to determine the degree of intervention by the master or even the conditions of his commission; and the two paintings of much lesser interest from the former Yusupov collection in St Petersburg, a distinctly early copy with no direct link to Vernet or his workshop, which last appeared at public sale in March 1996 in Vienna.
While there is no doubt as to the posteriority of the latter pair, the debate remains as to the identification of the one that was actually presented at the Salon in 1767, as the laconic information in the relevant booklet does not allow us to decide. As Olivier Caumont explains, two mentions of the dimensions of the paintings in Mme de Bandeville’s pair in the catalogue of her after-death sale in 1787, and then in that of the Lebrun sale of 11 January 1793, would indicate that La Source abondante offered for sale by Daguerre at Drouot on 17 May 2018, now kept in a private collection, would correspond to one of the two original autograph paintings. The slightly larger size of the pair acquired by Langres would disqualify it.
Of very high quality, probably partly autographed and of exactly the same composition, its interest is no less, especially as Les Occupations de rivage of the probable pair of Mme de Bandeville is not yet located, and it remains the only complete pair to be preserved and to be related to Diderot’s famous criticism. The length of the comments devoted to them in the Promenade Vernet, where they are the first and fourth of the seven paintings by the artist exhibited at the Salon of 1767 to be described, underlines the importance they had for the philosopher, emblems of Diderot’s taste, whose skilful exhibition by the Musée Fabre and then the Fondation de l’Hermitage in 2013-2014 (see article) is well worth remembering. Joseph Vernet was among the artists most appreciated by the philosopher, alongside Jean Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.