This wash drawing depicts an idyllic landscape, a subject favored by Vernet. The French marine and landscape artist was well known for his picturesque scenes of rural life. The center of the composition is dominated by a large tree at the water’s edge with a rocky hill rising diagonally to the right where a fortress stands. Five small figures, including a pair of fishermen with their boat and two seated women conversing with a standing young man, dot the foreground. At left is a city gate and a portion of a wall. Beneath them in the distance are three more fishermen on the bank of the river. Vernet’s soft and free-flowing forms and illustration of an expansive and cloudless sky convey an atmosphere of serenity and timelessness. His pastoral vista is reminiscent of bucolic scenes by sixteenth-century French landscape painters, such as Claude Lorrain. Inscribed “Verney” on the verso of the mount in the lower left.

written by Emma Lyandres, St. Andrews University, Scotland, 2022