Claude-Joseph Vernet (French, 1714–1789)
Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm, 1775
Oil on canvas
Foundation for the Arts Collection, Mrs. John B. O'Hara Fund, 1983.41.FA

When this picture was painted, Vernet was at the height of his career as France’s leading landscape painter. Mountain Landscape was originally commissioned by the famous English collector Lord Shelburne, Marquis of Lansdowne, in October 1774 for Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, London.

Combining a dramatic treatment of light, atmosphere, and setting with a delicate handling of surface and detail, Vernet shows his powers at their peak. Within a remote and rocky terrain, villagers respond hurriedly to the approaching storm: fishermen haul in their nets, a mother gathers up her child, and a woman struggles with a reluctant donkey. The true subject of this picture, however, is the fierceness of nature and humanity’s inadequacy before it. This emphasis on the power of nature is a key element of the 18th-century notion of the sublime, and foreshadows the 19th-century romantic movement.