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A masted ship with tattered sails crashes near a rocky shore among choppy waves, beneath a sky filled with charcoal-gray clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. More then two dozen men and women are scattered among the wreckage and along the shore. They all have pale skin and are small in scale within the landscape. Some of them are barefoot, and they wear clothing in ivory white, ruby red, slate gray, beige, or teal blue. The tall mast of the ship pitches at a steep angle from near the lower right corner of the canvas toward the upper left. A narrow red flag streams in the wind from the top of the mast. Seven men cling to the crow’s nest, a platform near the top of the mast, and on the mast around it. More people work amid a fallen sail on the ship’s deck and dangle from the rigging that is being pulled ashore by others. The ship’s second mast is broken in half, splintered where it has fallen against jagged boulders in the lower right corner. On the shore, a woman wearing a pink dress and blue stockings holds her arms up to the sky as a bare-chested man wraps his arms around her waist. A man nearby hunches over as he hauls in a cage from the surf. To our left, a second woman is surrounded by three men, two of whom support her torso. She wears a pale yellow skirt and her white shirt has fallen to expose one breast. Two trunks and a large roll of cloth are piled behind the trio, to our left. On the other side of the group, a brown dog sits and looks back over its shoulder toward a man who rolls a barrel onto the beach. A rocky, vertical cliff nearly spans the height of the left edge of the painting, and the cliffs continue along the waterline into the distance. Two people perch on a rocky outcropping near those on the beach, and a tree with a cracked, splintered trunk is doubled back by the wind above the pair. Water sprays high against the cliffs beyond, and a fortress with a castle sits atop the cliffs in the distance. Farther out in the water and to our right, a second ship with sails bulging in the wind lurches to the right. A streak of bright, golden-yellow lightning zigzags in the bank of clouds over this ship and reaches the horizon to our left, illuminating the low skyline of a town in the deep distance, beyond the cliffs. The clouds around the lightning are bathed in coral-peach light, but the surrounding clouds are dark gray. The artist signed and dated the work as if he had inscribed the side of one trunk, near the lower left corner, “J. Vernet F. 1772.”

The Shipwreck, 1772

Claude-Joseph Vernet

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 55

This dramatic scene is meant to evoke the “sublime,” a feeling that combines terror, awe, and delight. The small, frantic figures are overwhelmed by the violence of nature: the wind and waves and the jagged lightning bolt brightening the dark sky. Moonlight, the partner painting, presents a contrast: a calm, reassuring harbor, peacefully subdued by man-made architecture. Marine painting was popular in the 18th century, particularly in the British Empire, which maintained a powerful fleet of ships to secure its colonies around the globe. British aristocrats commissioned paired paintings from Vernet to decorate their country homes.

Dive deeper

Claude-Joseph Vernet was one of the most famous landscape and marine painters in Europe during the second half of the 18th century. After his initial schooling in his native Avignon and in Aix-en-Provence, the 20-year-old artist traveled to Rome in 1734. He studied there for a brief time with the French-born marine painter Adrien Manglard, but quickly established his own reputation. Vernet made sketching trips in and around Rome and along the Mediterranean coast as far south as Naples, capturing scenes that provided the basic repertoire for the rest of his long career. He was soon sought after by Roman collectors, as well as by French diplomats in Italy and the many wealthy travelers from north of the Alps, especially the British making their Grand Tour. For these patrons Vernet painted views of Rome and Naples, and imaginary landscapes and coastal scenes—often in pairs or a set of four.

The Shipwreck epitomizes the type of marine subject for which Vernet was best known. It was commissioned, along with a pendant, Moonlight, by Lord Arundell in November 1771. The Shipwreck formed a dramatic contrast with the peaceful, moonlit coast scene, illustrating respectively the “sublime” (eliciting a sensation of horror in the spectator) and the “beautiful” (an agreeable and reposeful sensation), concepts that were much discussed in aesthetic discourse of the day. A ship flying a Dutch flag has foundered on a rocky seashore during a dramatic storm. Wind crashes the waves, bends a tree to breaking point, and sends clouds scudding across the sky, while a red zigzag crack of lightning illuminates a harbor town farther along the coast. Survivors from the wreck are distraught, exhausted, or just grateful to have clambered ashore. As the ship takes a final lurch against the rocks, desperate survivors slide down a rope in an attempt to reach the land. Shipwrecks were a real travel hazard in the 18th century, similar to automobile and plane crashes in our own time. Vernet painted the scene with lively brushwork, corresponding to the various effects of clouds, waves, and foam; his figures, however, were carefully and precisely rendered.

(Original text by Philip Conisbee, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalog Art for the Nation, 2000; updated in 2020.)

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 113.5 x 162.9 cm (44 11/16 x 64 1/8 in.)

framed: 124.8 x 172.9 x 7.6 cm (49 1/8 x 68 1/16 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Patrons' Permanent Fund and Chester Dale Fund

Accession Number

2000.22.1

Artists / Makers

Claude-Joseph Vernet (painter) French, 1714 - 1789

Image Use

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Detail Information

Inscription

lower left: J. Vernet / F. 1772

Provenance

Commissioned November 1771 by Henry, 8th Lord Arundell of Wardour [1740-1808], Wardour Castle, Tisbury, Wiltshire;[1] by descent in his family;[2] (Arundell sale, at Wardour Castle, 10 September 1952, no. 144, as The Storm [paired with The Calm]). (Galerie Popoff, Paris), by 1957; private collection, France; (Marc Blondeau, Paris/Sotheby's, New York); purchased 17 February 2000 by NGA.

[1] The banker Henry Hoare II [1705-1785], who acted both as agent and patron for the artist, commissioned a pair of paintings on behalf of Lord Arundell. Completed and paid for by August 1772, the two paintings were The Shipwreck and Moonlight. They remained together until shortly after the 1952 sale; the current (2001) location of Moonlight is not known.

[2] The line of the Arundells of Wardour became extinct with the death of John Francis Arundell, 16th Baron Arundell of Wardour, who was killed in action during World War II on 25 September 1944.

Associated Names

Arundell, 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour, Henry
Galerie Popoff
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)
Sotheby's

Exhibition History

2000: Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2003: The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Altes Museum, Berlin, 2003-2004, not in cat. (shown only in Washington).

2012: Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and "The Life Line", Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012, no. 11, fig. 10.

Bibliography

1864: Lagrange, Léon. Les Vernets. Joseph Vernet et la peinture au xviii e siècle. 2nd ed. Paris, 1864: 350, 367.

1926: Ingersoll-Smouse, Florence. Joseph Vernet, peintre de marine, 1714 – 1789. 2 vols. Paris, 1926: 2:23, nos. 954 – 955.

1952: Waterhouse, Ellis K. “English Painting and France in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 15 (1952): 133, repro.

2000: Washington 2000-2001. "Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century." (Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art.) Washington 2000: 46, repro., 47.

2001: Conisbee, Philip. "The Shipwreck, 1772, by Claude-Joseph Vernet." In Mélanges en Hommage à Pierre Rosenberg: Peintures et dessins en France et en Italie XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles. Paris, 2001: 153-158, fig. 2.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 258-259, no. 209, color repro.

2004: National Gallery of Art. "National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection." Selected and with commentaries by John Oliver Hand. Washington, 2004: 258-259, no. 209, color repro.

2009: Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 92, 432-435, color repro.

2012: Foster, Kathleen A. "Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and 'The Life Line'." American Art Review 24, no. 6 (November-December 2012): 88, color repro.

2015: "Art for the Nation: The Story of the Patrons' Permanent Fund." National Gallery of Art Bulletin, no. 53 (Fall 2015):16-17, repro.

2016: Baetjer, Katharine. "Jean Pillement: Shipwrecks and the Sublime." Metropolitan Museum Journal 51 (2016): 102, fig. 4.

2018: Yin, Steph. "How Often Does Lightning Strike? More Than Artists Figured." New York Times 167, no. 57,991 (June 12, 2018): D2, color fig.

2021: Kennicott, Philip and Matthew Cappucci. "Examining the Elements of Breathtaking Art." Washington Post 144, no. 225 (July 18, 2021): E1, E10, color repro.