Hunting in the Pontine Marches, Horace Vernet, oil on canvas, 40 x 54 in. (100 x 137 cm), in the collection of the National Galleryy of Art, DC. You can zoom or download a high resolution image from their page.
Every once in a while, I come across a landscape that captures my intention, and look up the artist’s work only to find they are not at all landscape painters, and the painting I’m admiring is an exception.
Such is the case with this painting, and it’s companion piece, Departure for the Hunt in the Pontine Marshes, which I wrote about in 2018.
French painter Horace Vernet, who was active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was not known for his landscapes. This and the companion piece hang together in the National Gallery of Art, in DC; and I always make sure to spend a few minutes with them when I’m there.
I love Vernet’s value arrangement, playing hide and seek with our visual interest. Sometimes we’re drawn to things in the light, and sometimes in the dark. I really like the textures he uses on the tree trunks, both smooth and rough.
I also think of this as a pretty good example of limiting a color range, and caresully doleing out the size of the roles for each color, with the most highly chromatic color at the 10% range.
I recommend zooming or downloading the image in the NGA site to get a feeling for it as a whole.The play of light through the composition doesn’t read well in my small image (images above, top).
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