Horace Vernet (French, 1789–1863)

b. 1789 — d. 1863

Born into a family of artists, Horace Vernet's profession seems to have been inevitable. His father, Carle Vernet (1758-1836), was a painter and lithographer; his grandfathers were Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) and Jean-Michel Moreau the younger (1741-1814), and his uncle the architect Jean-François Chalgrin (1739-1811). While his earliest lessons were given by his father, Vernet also worked in the studio of François-André Vincent (1746-1814) until 1810. The following year Vernet created caricatures for the Journal des dames et des modes, an activity he would continue until 1815. He was first accepted at the Salon in 1812, and his talent so impressed Jérôme Bonaparte that he commissioned an equestrian portrait from Vernet. Throughout his life, he would receive many official commissions for contemporary history paintings. Vernet kept a busy studio that, during the first years of the Restoration, was used as a meeting place for liberals. When some of his paintings were rejected from the 1822 Salon because of their supposed antiroyalist subject matter, Vernet displayed them at his studio, attracting large crowds. Despite the Salon rejection, Vernet was elected to the Institut de France in 1826 and became the director of the Académie de France in Rome two years later, a position he would occupy until 1835. After his return to Paris, Vernet became a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.