Claude-Joseph Vernet is thought by some critics to be the most famous and successful landscape and marine painter of eighteenth-century France. He is noted for creating landscapes with dramatic atmospheric effects of the sky and weather, along with masterful detailing of foreground figures. Vernet, a native from Avignon, first studied with his father who, also was an artist, then he went on to paint with Philipe Sauvan, in Avignon. In 1734 Vernet went to Rome and painted landscapes of the local countryside and seacoast influence by the works of Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Doughet and Salvator Rosa and by 1740 he had established a list of patrons to include artists Placido Costanzi and Sebastiano Conca and important Frenchmen, ...