La Promenade Vernet

Claude-Joseph Vernet: La Source Abondante
(whole image and detail)
oil on canvas, 1767 (?)
Hermitage Museum, Youssoupov Gallery
(http://www.univ-montp3.fr)
no copyright infringement intended

...C’était deux pécheurs ; l’un assis et les jambes pendantes vers le bas du rocher, tenait sa ligue qu’il avait jetée dans des eaux qui baignaient cet endroit ; l’autre, les épaules chargées de son filet, et courbé vers le premier, s’entretenait avec lui. Sur l’espèce de cette chaussée rocailleuse que le pied du rocher formait en se prolongeant, dans un lieu où cette chaussée s’inclinait vers le fond, une voiture couverte et conduite par un paysan, descendait vers un village situe au-dessus de cette chaussée… croyez-vous qu’un artiste intelligent eût pu se dispenser de placer ce nuage précisément où il est ?

(Diderot, Salon de 1767)

[Two fishermen; one of them seated, his legs dangling down the rock, keeping his rod, thrown in the waters bathing this place; the other, his shoulders charged by the mesh, bent to the first, talking to him. A kind of rocky road, shaped at the foot of the rock, extending further, eventually leaning downward; a covered cart driven by a peasant, descending to a village situated some place beyond... do you think that a clever artist might miss placing this cloud exactly where it is?]


(click here for the Romanian version)


La Promenade Vernet is a fragment of the chronicle consacrated by Diderot to the 1767 Salon of Paris. It is usually taken as an independent work due to its unity in topic and style.

A few words about Diderot's Salons. He wrote the chronicles of the Salons from 1759 to 1781 and published them in Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique. As this magazine was distributed only to a very select list of subscribers (just a few members of the European high aristocracy, none of them from France), Diderot's Salons would get known by the French public much later, being included in posthumous editions of his work.

The list of artists analyzed by Diderot is pretty long, among them Chardin, Deshays, Greuze, Boucher, Vernet, Fragonard (well, many others, I mentioned here only the ones whose works I have seen myself at the National Gallery of Art in DC). The approach taken by Diderot is highly informal. As is the case with most of Diderot’s writings, these reviews don’t fall neatly into any particular genre, straddling several domains. They’re simultaneously aesthetic philosophy; letters to a close friend and to far-away readers; art criticism and entertaining literature (Claudia Moscovici, Diderot’s Salons: Art Criticism of Greuze, Chardin, Boucher and Fragonard). Aesthetic philosophy: is there a universal criteria for defining beauty or by the contrary, each viewer comes with a particular criteria? Diderot looks for a balanced answer, as both universal and particular are dangerous if taken absolutely. Epistolary form: each of these chronicles is composed in the form of a long letter addressed by Diderot to his friend Grimm (the chief editor of the Correspondance littéraire); comments made by Grimm are also inserted here and there in the text. Art criticism: Rococo was coming to a close; even if Boucher was still in the bucolic, the interesting stuff was coming from Chardin, whose eye was targeting the mundane; Diderot was clearly advocating the new artistic tendencies, he was doing it with passion and determination. Entertainment: as the only readers of the Salons were the subscribers of the Correspondance littéraire, people leaving far away from France, so in absolute impossibility of seeing the paintings analyzed by Diderot, everything ultimately was a play between their imagination and the magic of the author.

Claude-Joseph Vernet: Les Occupations du Rivage
(whole image and detail)
oil on canvas, 1766
private collection
(http://sites.univ-provence.fr/pictura/GenerateurNotice.php?numnotice=A4435)
no copyright infringement intended

…ce groupe des femmes. L’une, penchée vers la surface de l’eau, y trempe son linge ; l’autre, accroupie, le tord ; une troisième, debout, en a rempli le panier, qu’elle a posé sur sa tète… Hâte-toi, car ces figures prendront dans un instant une autre position, moins heureuse, peut-être. Ce pécheur, qui a jeté son filet vers la gauche... son chien à côté de lui... à l’endroit où les eaux prennent toute leur étendue... ces eaux tranquilles et calmes dont la surface s’étend et se perd dans le lointain…

(Diderot, Salon de 1767)

[.. .this group of women. One, bent toward the surface of the water, soaking her laundry; the other, squatted, wringing out the washcloth; a third, standing, has filled her basket and placed it on her head... Hurry up, because these figures will take in a moment another position, maybe less happy. This fisherman, who has cast his net to the left... his dog beside him... to the place where the waters take their full extent... these quiet and calm waters whose surface is extending, vanishing in the distance...]


Now let's come to the Promenade Vernet.There are seven paintings analyzed. As Diderot describes each one without naming it, identifying them is a difficult problem. All of them are mentioned in the catalogue of the 1767 Salon under a collective number without any further details. Eventually scholars were able to conclude on four of them: La Source Abondante is located today at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Les Occupations du Rivage belongs now to a private collection in Paris, Le Fanal Exhaussé arrived at us indirectly (there is an etching made after it by William Byrnes, kept now at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France). As for the fourth, Rivage dans les Alpes, its present location is unknown.

Claude-Joseph Vernet: Le Fanal Exhaussé
(etching based on Vernet's painting)
William Byrne, engraver
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cabinet des Estampes , DC-3 Fol
(http://www.ebay.it/itm/1772-ACQUAFORTE-DA-DIPINTO-VERNET-LE-FANAL-EXHAUSSE-INCISORE-WILLIAM-BYRNE-/200851156313)
no copyright infringement intended

... un phare, qui s’élevait du sommet des rochers. Il allait se perdre dans la nue ; et la mer, en mugissant, venait se briser à ses pieds. Au loin, des pécheurs et des gens de mer étaient diversement occupés. Toute l’étendue des eaux agitées s’ouvrait devant moi ; elle était couverte des bâtiments dispersés. J’en voyais s’élever au-dessus des vagues, tandis que d’autres se perdaient au-dessous, chacun, à l’aide de ses voiles et de sa manœuvre, suivant des routes contraires, quoique poussé par un même vent ; image de l’homme et du bonheur, du philosophe et de la vérité.

(Diderot, Salon de 1767)

[... a lighthouse, as emerged from the top of the rocks, going to get lost in the clouds; and the sea, roaring, crashing at its foot. In the distance, fishermen and seafarers variously busy. The whole surface  of the choppy waters opened to me; covered with scattered boats. Some rising above the waves, others lost below, each using its sails and manipulation, following contrary roads, though driven by the same wind; image man and happiness, philosopher and truth.]



It's a promenade, because that's what Diderot is doing, he's telling about an imaginary journey from the landscape rendered in one painting to another: seven works by Vernet like seven stations, each one a place to meditate the scenery - roks, clouds, waters, people, boats, lights and shadows; each meditation going further, raising more general questions, ultimately giving the impulse to continue the journey toward a new station, to find more and more, to understand more and more. A journey like a pilgrimage toward the yonder, in quest for understanding your sources, your identity. It's the sublimate expression of that Grand Tour, the trip on the traces of European cultural legacy, mandatory for the young men of means of the 18th century, a pilgrimage, a rite of passage. Vernet had lived that experience, by rendering the sceneries on his canvases. Diderot was appropriating the experience of Vernet, was living it again, exploring all its hidden potentialities. And the readers were invited to live the same experience again, by themselves, reading the text, imagining the scenery, exploring further the hidden potentialities, in quest for their European cultural identity, for their sources. Liszt would later take the same approach in his Years of Pilgrimage. Experience lived once by the visual artists, remembered, filtered, lived again, through literature for Diderot, through music for Liszt. Experience of our identity, of our sources.


Elle (La Promenade Vernet) prolonge le passé et elle annonce l’avenir, dans tous les domaines : esthétique, philosophique, poétique. Si le propre des grandes créations et d’intégrer et d’irradier, celle-ci se classe parmi les premières… Sans être un hors-texte ni même un prétexte, la présence du tableau ne se manifeste que sous forme d’échos affaiblis, d’autant plus troublante qu’ils sont étouffés par l’éloignement, tel le carillon d’une cathédrale engloutie… On va sans cesse (et sans encombre) d’un réel factice qui est lui-même un imaginaire transposé, pour rejoindre le réel du tableau, lequel a son tour devient le lieu de fixation d’une idée, et le prétexte de nouveaux départs.

(Jacques Chouillet, Commentaire sur La Promenade Vernet)

[It extends the past and it announces the future, in all fields: aesthetic, philosophical, poetic. If the characteristic of great creations is to integrate and to radiate, this Promenade ranks among the first... Without being an inset or even a pretext, the presence of the painting manifests itself in the form of weak echoes, the more troubling as they are muffled by remoteness, like chimes of sunken Cathedrals... We will constantly (and safely) make the journey from a fictive reality (which is itself a transposed imaginary) to the real painting, which in turn becomes the place to set ideas, and the pretext of new beginnings]

Claude-Joseph Vernet: Rivage dans les Alpes
oil on canvas, 1767
present location: unkown
(http://www.univ-montp3.fr/pictura/GenerateurNotice.php?numnotice=A1203)
no copyright infringement intended

… à droite la cîme d’un rocher qui se perd dans la nue. Il était dans le lointain, à en juger par les objets interposés, et la manière terne et grisâtre dont il était éclairé. Proche de nous, toutes les couleurs se distinguent ; au loin, elles se confondent en s’éteignant ; et leur confusion produit un blanc mat… au devant de ce rocher, et beaucoup plus voisin, une fabrique de vieilles arcades, sur le ceintre de ces arcades une plate-forme, qui conduisait a une espèce de phare, au-delà de ce phare, a une grande distance, des monticules. Proche des arcades … un torrent qui se précipitait d’une immense hauteur, et dont les eaux écumeuses étaient resserrées dans la crevasse profonde d’un rocher, et brisées dans leur chute par des masses informes de pierres ; vers ces masses, quelques barques à flot … une langue de terre où des pécheurs et d’autres gens étaient occupés. Sur cette langue de terre un bout de forêt éclairé par la lumière qui venait d’au-delà ; entre ce paysage…, le rocher crevasse et la fabrique des pierres, une échappée de mer qui s’étendait à l’ infini, et sur cette mer quelques bâtiments dispersés…

(Diderot, Salon de 1767)

[…. the crown of a rock vanishing in the clouds. It was in the distance, judging by the objects interposed, and how dull and greyish it was lit. Close to us, all the colors stand out; in the distance, they merge fading away; and their confusion produced a matt white... in front of this rock, and much more nearby, a fabric of old arcades, on the tops of these arches a platform, leading to a kind of lighthouse, beyond the lighthouse, at a great distance, mounds. Close to the arcades... a torrent rushing from a great height, and the frothy waters tightened into the deep crevasse of a rock, and broken in their fall by informed masses of stones; to these masses, a few boats afloat... a tongue of land where fishermen and other people were busy. On this spit of land a piece of forest lit by light coming from beyond; between this landscape..., the rocky crevasse and the fabric of stones, a bit of sea stretching towards infinity, and on this sea a few scattered boats]


(Diderot)

(Vernet)