VERNET, French family of artists

Antoine Vernet (1689–1753) was a prosperous artisan painter in Avignon to whom some decorated coach panels are attributed. Of his three sons, Joseph Vernet earned a reputation throughout Europe as a landscape and marine painter, receiving the commission from Louis XV for the series Ports of France. Jean-Antoine Vernet (1716–?1755) also painted seascapes, and (Antoine-)François Vernet (1730–79) was a decorative painter; their respective sons, Louis-François Vernet (1744–84) and Joseph Vernet the Younger (1760-792), were both active in Paris as sculptors. Joseph's son Carle Vernet, a painter and lithographer, became known for his pictures of horses and battle scenes, though his achievement was overshadowed not only by his father's but by that of his son Horace Vernet, a prolific and highly successful painter, especially of battle scenes. The family was connected by marriage to several other notable French artists, Carle becoming father-in-law of Hippolyte Lecomte and Horace that of Paul Delaroche; Carle's sister Emilie married the architect Jean-François-Thérese Chalgrin.