Claude-Joseph Vernet, 'A Sea-Shore', 1776

Two ladies, both dressed in gowns with swagged overskirts that were fashionable in the 1770s, have been brought down to the shore by a man. He is drawing their attention to something, but it is unclear whether he is pointing towards the large ship about to enter the harbour or to the women with their skirts hitched up gathering shrimps. The shrimp women’s undignified poses and muscular physiques form a contrast with the elegant ladies on the shore. The man wears a cylindrical military hat, fur-lined cloak and long leather boots. His scarlet uniform and large moustache identify him as an imagined Hungarian hussar. He carries a walking stick, suggesting that he is retired from active service. The ladies are followed by two other more modestly dressed women, one apparently comforting the other, and by a dark-skinned Moor wearing a turban. As in many of his other paintings, Vernet has placed several figures in the middle distance and background, and even on the three-masted ship near the horizon.

This Italian coastal scene bathed in soft sunlight is clearly influenced by the port scenes of Claude, though much of the effect in Vernet’s painting depends upon its picturesque human detail. Commissioned by the comte du Luc and signed and dated 1776, the picture represents an imaginary harbour view. The lighthouse is loosely based on one that Vernet drew near Naples in about 1750 (Harbour and Lighthouse, Albertina, Vienna) and appears in many other views by him. Although Vernet had on other occasions used the motif seen here of the corner of a fortified wall topped by a turret, the octagonal fort is unusual in his paintings. The decorative frieze of festoons on the fort is echoed in the skirts of the ladies wearing the plumed hats.

Although the painting contains a variety of figures, its main subject is the atmospheric effects of light, air, cloud and water. The figure group on the left, balanced by the trees to the right, is silhouetted against the sun and overshadowed by the dark cloud that stretches over the lighthouse.

This and Marine (sold in Paris on 9 December 1999), which Vernet painted for the comte du Luc in 1772, both formed a single lot in the comte du Luc’s 1777 sale, and remained together until sold in 1825. It has often been assumed that Vernet painted them as a pair and intended them to hang together as pendants. Although both pictures are painted on copper – a support used relatively rarely by Vernet – they are slightly different in size and it is not certain whether he intended them as pendants. The gesturing hussar in the group on the left of the National Gallery’s painting echoes a gesturing woman towards the right of Marine, but there is some difference in the figures’ sizes, and the two paintings do not work as a pair compositionally. Whether or not intended as a pendant for Marine, the clear bright colours and very smooth surface of the National Gallery’s painting were probably exactly what the comte du Luc expected when he commissioned it to be painted on copper.