In five years of prolific painting, he concentrated on the Black Sea coast near Odesa, in all its moods. Could he have been a successor to Ivan Aivazovsky?
marine
More accomplished as a print-maker, his views of the beach at Berck are desolate. A good friend of Degas, he exhibited at the Salon, so dropped from the 3rd exhibition.
Perhaps the one and only expedition sponsored by an art collector, William Bradford sailed to Greenland in 1869, and based the rest of career on its images.
After European artists saw Hokusai’s print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, their own depictions became widespread, peaking in 1896.
Painters paid little attention to the form of near-breaking regular waves until the mid-1700s. Japanese art later changed Western painting, with a single print by Hokusai.
Modern landscape painting, since before the Impressionists, relies on oil sketches made in front of the motif. Was it Vernet who advised Valenciennes to adopt this practice?
He started sailing to Labrador and Greenland, and became a passionate painter of the Arctic coast and seas. One work was commissioned by Queen Victoria.
Certainly the most prolific, and probably the most successful, marine artist of all time. His paintings were even admired by JMW Turner.
Had he been French or British, he would probably have been rated as one of the greatest painters of the 1800s.
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