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A shaft of sunlight illuminates a bone-white, barren tree trunk that has fallen across a stream within a dense wood in this horizontal landscape painting. The water closest to us is deep in shadow, and the surface closer to the opposite bank is a shimmering moss green. One spiraling, ash-brown tree trunk rises out of the stream to our right of center, and another hunched, gnarled trunk grows from the far bank, to our left. Tiny in scale, two dogs stand at the water’s edge between the gnarled tree and the fallen trunk beyond. The dirt earth where the tree had stood is sand-colored, and it is surrounded with pea and pine-green grass and growth. Nearly lost in shadow, to our right, three men gather just beyond the fallen tree. Two ride donkeys while the third strides toward them with his rifle resting on his shoulder, leading another donkey. All three men wear dark jackets and trousers and tan-colored hats. A fourth man rides a donkey into the scene from the right side. Just above his head, slivers of blue water and a pale pink sky peek through the tree trunks. A fifth donkey faces us from our side of the fallen tree and a third dog runs toward the water. The impenetrable forest reaches off the top edge of the painting, the trees painted in hunter, olive, and sage green. Many of the tree trunks are wrapped with vines.

Horace Vernet

Departure for the Hunt in the Pontine Marshes, 1833

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 93

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 100.01 × 150.65 cm (39 3/8 × 59 5/16 in.)

framed: 135.89 × 170.82 × 16.51 cm (53 1/2 × 67 1/4 × 6 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Fund

Accession Number

2004.38.1

Artists / Makers

Horace Vernet (painter) French, 1789 - 1863

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Provenance

Pierre-Hippolyte Aumont [d. 1865], by 1846.[1] Probably (sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 6 May 1870, no. 5, as Vue dans la forêt de Nettuno).[2] Private collection, France; (sale, Drouot Richelieu, Renaud-Giquello & Associates, Paris, 17 October 2003, no. 52); (Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York); purchased 27 February 2004 by NGA.

[1] According to the 2003 sale catalogue, Pierre-Hipppolyte Aumont likely owned this painting at the time he lent its pendant, Vernet's Hunting in the Pontine Marshes (NGA 1989.3.1), to an 1846 exhibition at the Bazar Bonne-Nouvelle.

[2] Bruno Chenique has suggested that this is the NGA painting, sold together with NGA 1989.3.1, which was lot 4, Chasse dans les marais Pontins, in the sale catalogue.

Associated Names

Aumont, Pierre-Hippolyte
Drouot, Hôtel
Feigen, Richard L.
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)
Renaud-Giquello & Associates

Exhibition History

1831: Salon, 6th supplement, Société nationale des beaux-arts, Paris, 1831, no. 3159, as "Etudes de forêt."

1831: Salon, Société nationale des beaux-arts, Paris, 1831, no. 2085.

Bibliography

1831: Farcy, Charles. "Salon de 1831." Journal des Artistes (7 August 1831): 100.

1831: Pillet, Fabien. "Salon de 1831." Le moniteur universel (28 July 1831): 1274.

1831: Planche, Gustave. Salon de 1831. Paris, 1831: 207.

1831: Schoelcher, V. "Salon de 1831." L'Artiste 2 (1831): 30.

1833: Lenormant, Charles. Les Artistes contemporains. 2 vols. Paris, 1833: 1:96.

1855: Planche, Gustave. Etudes sur l'Ecole Française, 1831-1852, Peinture et sculpture. 2 vols. Paris, 1855: 1:120.

2000: Eitner, Lorenz. French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2000: 354, as location unknown.

2003: Noon, Patrick. Constable to Delacroix. British Art and the French Romantics. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. London, 2003: 175, under no. 93, as location unknown.