CLAUDE-JOSEPH VERNET
Avignon 1714 - 1789 Paris
Ref: CC 236
The grand cascade at Tivoli
Signed and dated lower right: Joseph Vernet 1753
Oil on canvas: 39 x 53 in / 99.1 x 134.6 cm
Frame size: 50 x 64 in / 127 x 162.6 cm
In a nineteenth century Neoclassical Revival carved and gilded frame
Provenance: Commissioned from Claude-Joseph Vernet in 1753 by M. Guillaume-Léon du Tillot, Marquis de Felino (1711-1774), Paris; his sale, Paris, 27th March 1775, lot 49; M. Georges-Tobie de Thélusson (1728-1776), Paris, acquired from the above via his agent, Julien Folliot; his sale, Paris, 1st December 1777, lot 44 (together with its pendant, Marine: le naufrage[1]); De Saint-Victor, acquired from the above; La Pierre, Paris, 9th March 1778, lot 1b; Pierre-Jacques-Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt (1715-1785), Paris; his sale, Paris, 24th April 1786, lot 81 (together with its pendant); Godefroy, acquired from the above; Philippe-Laurent de Joubert, Baron de Sommières et de Montredon (1729-1792), Paris; his sale, Paris, 15th April 1793, lot 54 (together with its pendant); Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), Paris, acquired from the above; his sale, Paris, 21st July 1795, lot 114 (together with its pendant); J Desmarest, Paris, acquired from the above; his sale, Paris, 20th March 1797, lot 30; Alexandre-Louis Roëttiers de Montaleau (1748-1808), Paris, acquired from the above; his sale, Paris, 23rd July 1802, lot 161; Bon-Thomas Henry (1766-1836), Cherbourg, France, acquired from the above; A Baird-Carter Fine Art Dealers, London, by 1914; private collection, Austria; Sotheby’s Monaco, 13th June 1982, lot 73 (as Paysage des environs de Tivoli); P&D Colnaghi & Co., London; Philip Hewat-Jaboor, Ltd., London (as An imaginary landscape incorporating the grand cascade at Tivoli); acquired in 1985 from the above by Toni Chapman Brinker (1950-2024), Dallas, Texas Literature:
J Vernet, MS Livres de Raison (Bibliothèque Municipale, Avigon), no.51 (‘Deux tableaux, toile d’empereur, deux cents écus’)
L Lagrange, Joseph Vernet et la peinture au XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1864, p.470 E Bignou & F Ingersoll Smouse, Joseph Vernet, peintre de marine, 1714-1789, vol. I, Florence 1926, pp.65-66, no.418 (as Paysage d’un site agréable)
This painting is among the most imposing of Claude-Joseph Vernet’s landscapes, commissioned in 1753, with a pendant Marine: le naufrage now belonging to the Musée du Louvre, by Guillaume-Léon du Tillot, Marchese di Felino (1711-1774), First Minister of the Duchy of Parma. Vernet had been living in Rome for almost twenty years, absorbing the influence of the Roman landscapes of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), but above all imbibing the atmosphere of Lazio and the Campagna with its many relics of the mighty empire of Rome. In 1753, the same year that The grand cascade at Tivoli was made, Vernet returned to France and was commissioned by Louis XV to paint a series of the Ports of France, a propaganda exercise showcasing French maritime and commercial power. Working at the height of his powers, Vernet rose magnificently to the challenge, combing topographical accuracy with poetic monumentality.
The grand cascade at Tivoli distils the essence of Italy for a self-made member of an international élite. Guillaume-Léon du Tillot, the son of a valet-de-chambre, served at the Court of Charles III of Spain before going to Parma as councillor to Louis XV’s son-in-law Philippe, Duke of Parma. Tillot went from organising Court entertainments, to Finance Minister, to First Minister, where his Enlightenment policies encouraged new industries and reformed agriculture. He instituted an Académie des Beaux Arts and a museum of antiquities. Vernet’s painting is very much in the spirit of Tillot’s sophisticated interest in Italy old and new.
Tivoli, nineteen miles north-east of Rome, was full of fascination for eighteenth century admirers of antiquity like Tillot. Its spectacular setting, where the river Aniene cascades from the Sabine hills, gave rise to legends even in ancient times. The woods sheltered a sacred grove of Faunus. Tivoli was thought to be the haunt of a water nymph, Albunea, worshipped on the banks of the river, who later became associated with the Tiburtine Sibyl. The Emperor Augustus was said to have consulted her to ask if it was advisable that he should be worshipped as a god. Some of her prophecies were interpreted as prefiguring the birth of Christ: as such, she appears with the other Sibyls on Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling. All these stories, along with the beauty of the location, gave Tivoli a numinous quality that was very appealing to collectors like Tillot, who was steeped in Classical learning.
Vernet’s Grand cascade at Tivoli is a capriccio of the site rather than a faithful topographical rendition. He takes an unusual viewpoint, from behind and above the cascade, which is represented as a thin line of irradiated water across the foreground of the picture. We cannot see the dashing fury of the force. To the left, a shadowed, round tower provides a powerful repoussoir, throwing the sunlit landscape on the right into contrast. Light filters through the slender trees at the centre. The tower is reminiscent both of Roman ruins in the area, such as the Tempio della Tosse, and the round-towered fortresses built by Popes to constrain the unruly of Lazio, for example Pius II’s Rocca Pia (1461). The aqueduct is a more complete reimagining of the ruins of the Anio Novus aqueduct which crosses the Aniene near Tivoli. One of the four great aqueducts of Rome, it was begun by the Emperor Caligula in 38AD and completed in 52AD by Claudius. The extraordinary engineering feats of the Romans in bringing water to their city, supplemented by the works of various Popes, meant that much of the infrastructure survived into Vernet’s day, and indeed into our own. In the right middle distance is a church with a Romanesque tower, reminiscent of Tivoli’s church of San Lorenzo, largely rebuilt in baroque style in the seventeenth century and now Tivoli’s Cathedral.
In the right foreground is a group of fishermen and two local women dressed in Feast Day splendour, painted with the delicacy that characterises Vernet’s finest work. The women’s yellow and red dresses provide a high point of colour in the composition, while the light playing over their lacy head-coverings and apron casts an irresistible charm. Vernet links the modern inhabitants of Tivoli with the happy peasants of Virgil’s Georgics (29BC), simple and industrious, at one with nature and enjoying their rural idyll.
A series of distinguished owners
Vernet’s painting, blending a French sensibility with a profound understanding of the achievements of ancient Rome, the bedrock of Europe’s sense of civilization, chimed with Tillot’s Enlightenment outlook. The benign view of nature depicted in the Grand cascade at Tivoli was contrasted by the pendant to Tillot’s commission, Marine: le naufrage (Musée du Louvre, Paris, on loan to the Musée Calvet, Avignon). Whereas the Grand cascade employs hues of apricot, gold and warm ochres, the Marine is a symphony of slate greys, midnight blue and deep green. Eighteenth century poetry, as well as art, enjoyed pairing contrasts of winter and summer, calm and storm, sunrise and sunset (a frequent theme in Vernet’s work). Vernet’s exploration of countryside in the Grand cascade reflects the increasing interest in the emotional response to landscape that would characterise the Romantic era.
Guillaume-Léon du Tillot, Marchese di Folino, died in 1774, having been expelled from Parma thanks to the machinations of Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, wife of the intellectually limited Ferdinand I, Duke of Parma. The Grand cascade’s subsequent owners read like a roll-call of the ancien régime and later financial élite, an indication of the desirability of the canvas. The painting (with its pendant) passed through the hands of the noted French painter and art dealer Julien Folliot to the banker Georges-Tobie de Thellusson (1728-1776), business partner of Jacques Necker, the future Finance Minister of Louis XVI. It featured in Thellusson’s posthumous sale of 1777 and by 1778 was in the collection of Pierre-Jacques-Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt (1715-1785). Bergeret was Receiver-General of Finances for Montaubon and a major patron of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, who painted his portrait. After Bergeret’s death the Vernet was acquired by Philippe-Laurent de Joubert, Baron de Sommières et de Montredon (1792-1792). He was Treasurer of the States of Languedoc, portrayed c.1790, as the French Revolution began, by the bloodily enthusiastic revolutionary Jacques-Louis David.
Joubert’s posthumous sale was held in Paris on 15th April 1793, where the Grand cascade and its pendant were bought by the artist and art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), nephew of Charles Le Brun and scoundrelly husband of the portrait painter Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. At Le Brun’s sale in 1795 the pair of Vernets was bought by J Demarest and split up, with Marine: le naufrage beginning its journey to end up in the Louvre. The Grand cascade passed to Alexandre Roëttiers de Montaleau (1748-1808), a silversmith, medallist and leading Freemason who became Director of the Paris Mint and only narrowly avoided the perils of the Terror.
The next owner of the Vernet was Bon-Thomas Henry (1766-1836), who bought it from the Roëttiers sale in 1802. Born in Cherbourg and trained as an artist, he became a merchant and later a picture restorer, advising the Musées Royaux after the return of the French Monarchy. Henry built up a considerable private collection of his own, with an emphasis on eighteenth and early nineteenth century French and Flemish works, many of which are now in the Musée Thomas-Henry in Cherbourg. The Grand cascade was not among them. It is glimpsed in the hands of London art dealer A Baird-Carter by 1914 and then spent decades in a private collection in Austria before reappearing at Sotheby’s Monaco in 1982.
The Grand cascade was owned by the revered art dealer, collector and advisor Philip Hewat-Jaboor (1953-2022), who sold it in 1985 to the Dallas philanthropist Toni Chapman Brinker (1949-2023). She was married to the restaurant chain owner Norman Brinker from 2003 to 2009 and to the business magnate and financier T Boone Pickens from 2014 to 2017. Among her initiatives was Operation Blue Shield, which works to improve community relations between law enforcement and the citizens which it serves.
Pietro Melchiorre Ferrari, Guillaume-Léon du Tillot, Marchese di Felino (1711-1774). Tillot commissioned the painting by Vernet, with its pendant Marine: le naufrage (Musée du Louvre, Paris, on loan to the Musée Calvet, Avignon), in 1753.
CLAUDE-JOSEPH VERNET
Avignon 1714 - 1789 Paris
Claude-Joseph Vernet was one of the most eminent and influential French landscape painters of the eighteenth century. Born at Avignon, son of the painter Antoine Vernet, Claude-Joseph showed great talent at an early age. Patronised by the Marquise de Simiane, the Marquis de Caumont and the Comte de Quinson, he went to Italy in 1734. In Rome, Vernet probably worked initially in the studio of the French marine painter Adrien Manglard. By 1738 he had established a reputation as a painter of landscapes, seaports and coast scenes, reminiscent of seventeenth century masters such as Gaspard Dughet. In 1745 he married Virginia Cecilia Parker, daughter of Mark Parker, an Irish Captain in the Papal Navy.
Vernet was particularly concerned with rendering the transience of nature and the effects of light and weather. His paintings won critical acclaim for his ability to capture the changing beauties of nature. His subtle interest in changing landscape is seen in the way he conceived works in pairs and sets, contrasting times of day, weather, sea and shore scenes.
Vernet became a member of the Académie Royale and returned to France in 1753. That year he was commissioned by Louis XV to paint his famous series of the Ports of France, a celebration of the country’s principal seaports, in which he combined the exacting demands of topography with a poetic monumentality. Vernet completed only fifteen of the proposed twenty or more ports, exhibited at the Salon between 1755 and 1765. However, both in scale and quantity, this was one of the greatest official commissions of the century. Vernet finally settled in Paris in 1765, working for a large international clientele. He travelled to Switzerland with his patron Jean Girardot de Marigny in 1778 and died in Paris on the brink of the Revolution in 1789.
The work of Claude-Joseph Vernet is represented in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Château de Versailles; the National Gallery, London; the Hermitage, St Petersburg; the Prado, Madrid and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
[1] Signed and dated lower left: Joseph Vernet f. / 1753. Oil on canvas: 38 ½ x 52 ½ in / 98 x 133 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no.8310, on loan to the Musée Calvet, Avignon. Ingersoll-Smouse, op. cit., vol. I, p.65, no.417; illus. pl.XXXVI, fig. 83.
