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Vernet's repertoire was a limited one, consisting of landscapes, more-or-less reminiscent of Tivoli with its picturesque hills, overhanging rocks, waterfalls, and pastoral staffage; or more commonly marines, showing a rocky Italianate coastline, usually populated with fisherfolk, or a seaboard tamed by the hand of man into harbour with a mole and lighthouse reminiscent of Naples and represented at different times of day and in different weather conditions. Within this formulaic types, there was a considerable variety of pictorial motifs, which Vernet could mix and match with such a degree of invention that in an oeuvre of about two thousand paintings he never exactly repeated himself, except when he may have made an autograph replica. The Shipwreck is a characteristic work depicting a subject which Vernet painted in several versions.
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