Lot 125: Horace Vernet Portrait of a Military Officer, Possibly Nicholas I of Russia

Emile Jean Horace Vernet (French, 1789-1863) oil on panel portrait of man in military regalia, possibly Tzar Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855). He stands in three-quarter pose with left arm akimbo and before a windswept sky, with a rampant horse and rider in the distance to his right, and wears a cuirass and sword. Unsigned. With several stickers affixed to verso including Fine Art Packers Ltd., 8/9 Halkin Arcade, London. Housed in a giltwood frame with name plate. Panel: 10 3/4″ H x 8 1/4″ W. Frame: 14 1/4″ H x 12″ W. Note: Vernet painted for Czar Nicholas I during extended visits to Russia in 1836 and 1842-1843, including a number of portraits, with the current painting likely among them. Biographical note: Horace Vernet was born into an artistic family in Paris in 1789. His grandfather on his father’s side, Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), was France’s foremost painter of land- and seascapes. He was trained by his father, Carle Vernet. A prodigy in his childhood, a professional in his teens, he was spurred by financial needs arising from his early marriage in 1811 to exploit his phenomenal native facility. A torrent of saleable work soon poured from his studio: fashion designs, caricatures, portraits, horses in the manner of Carle, and landscapes in the manner of Joseph. In the early years of the Restoration, his studio became the meeting place of artists and veterans openly hostile to the Bourbon government. He flaunted his cult of Napoleon and found a patron in Louis-Philippe, duc d’Orleans. A resolute modernist but little affected by romanticism, he befriended Gericault and was one of the pioneers of lithography. In a series of battle scenes painted for the duc d’Orleans in 1821-1826, he gave a foretaste of what was to become his speciality. In short order, he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor, a member of the Institute, and after successes at the Salons of 1826 and 1827 was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome. During his seven years there, he displayed an agile versatility with paintings of Italian popular life, oriental subjects, and historical anecdotes. The Revolution in July 1830, which raised Louis-Philippe, Vernet’s patron, to the throne, opened vast opportunities of official employment to him. The year 1850 found him at the French siege of Rome; in 1854 he visited the battlefields of the Crimea. He had in the meantime enjoyed the lucrative patronage of Czar Nicholas I during two long visits to Russia in 1836 and 1842-1843. The Universal Exposition of 1855, at which he was represented by twenty-four paintings, crowned his popular and official success. At the time of his death in 1863, Vernet, a member of thirty academies, was France’s most famous artist, admired and imitated throughout Europe and deeply embedded in popular culture. (Adapted from National Gallery, London)

PROVENANCE: The collection of Jon E. Jones, Cookeville, TN, by descent from Robert “Bob” Jones, Jr., former President and Chancellor of Bob Jones University.

CONDITION: Overall very good condition. Negligible frame abrasion. Frame with abrasions and gilt loss.