‘A Landscape at Sunset’ & ‘A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas’ (1772) – Claude Joseph Vernet

The year is 1771, and the foremost artists of the milieu are gathered at the historic Paris Salon to showcase their masterworks to eminent personages across the European continent and its colonies. Milling among the upper-crust was Claude Joseph Vernet, a French painter renowned for his captivating maritime landscapes. Impressed by the technical mastery and verisimilitude of Vernet’s paintings, Lord Robert Clive (Clive of India), an officer of the British East India Company, commissioned Vernet to create two paintings of ships at sea on larger canvases. Clive later bought a different pair of paintings on behalf of Stanislaw Augustus, the King of Poland. Together titled “Two Landscapes: A Sunset and a Storm”, the paintings depict diametric seafaring conditions that are well within the mercurial temperament of the seas. The first painting, “Calme”, portrays a bustling dock on a serene summer evening, when fishermen return to shore with the day’s catch. Golden rays of sunlight emanate from the centre of the painting, reflecting off tranquil waters and gently rippling waves, casting warm shadows and evoking the muggy summer heat: the palette of hues and naturalistic detail bring the atmosphere of the shore to life. In the second painting, ‘Tempête’, the serene coastal setting of the fishermen’s evening routine is besieged by a tempest. Mercilessly tossed upon soaring waves, two ships struggle against a watery demise. Flashes of lightning break through rain-laden clouds, obscuring the sun from view. The sea has already claimed one casualty: from the remains of a shipwreck, dazed survivors emerge and drag themselves onto the salvation of solid ground. The distinction between beauty and the sublime in Vernet’s two paintings draws significant inspiration from Edmund Burke’s “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful” (first published in French in 1765), an essay that greatly influenced the Romantic and Gothic movements in European arts and literature. As Burke explains, beauty can evoke feelings of love and relaxation, but the Sublime is an aesthetic experience that induces feelings of horror and unease. A confrontation with the sublime in a piece of art, such as the terrible majesty of Vernet’s storm, can transform our initial terror-struck response into a swelling tide of awe and wonder.