Duc de Gramont;
His sale, Paris, 16 January 1775, lot  67, for 1699,19 livres;¹
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Gentleman"), London, Sotheby's, 17 May 1961, lot 49, to Hallsborough;
With Hallsborough Gallery, London, 1963;
European private collection;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 13 December 2000, lot 59;
With Richard Green, London, 2000;
From whom acquired by the present owner.

F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Joseph Vernet, Peintre de Marine, Paris 1926, vol. II, p. 54, no. 1338; 
Reproduced in The Connoisseur, May 1963, p. XLV (advertisement)

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is in remarkable condition. The panel on which it is painted is un-reinforced and flat. There are no breaks in the panel and the paint layer is stable. The only retouches are three tiny dots in the sky and as far as we can tell, there are no retouches at all in the foreground or figures. The painting should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In A Mediterranean Harbor at Sunset Vernet's marvelous ability to capture the nuances of light and atmosphere, in conjunction with the smooth surface of the copper support and the beautiful condition of the picture combine to create an evocative portrait of an unknown yet familiar port, probably somewhere in southern Italy.  It is surprisingly, one of a very few paintings on copper by the artist, for it would seem that the even, nonabsorbent surface would be perfectly suited to his refined technique, but the vast majority of his paintings are on canvas. The choice of support may have had more to do with monetary rather than aesthetic considerations, for the vast majority of Vernet's paintings were commissions and copper was far more expensive than canvas.   A Mediterranean Harbor is, in fact, unusually large for a copper and would have been very costly indeed.  It may well have been commissioned by Antoine VIII, Duc de Gramont, (1722-1801) a Peer of Fran🌠ce, who could well afford the extravagance, for it was one of four paintings by Vernet in his sale of 1775, which was large dominated by Dutch pictures.

Vernet painted A Mediterranean Harbor at Sunset, while he was working on The Ports of France, a massive project commissioned by Louis XV.  Vernet's task was to depict the various French seaports in a series of oversize topographic paintings on canvas, a visual demonstration of France's maritime might.  He began in 1753 and traveled all along the coast of France, stopping in the major ports in order to work in situ.  He finally returned to Paris in 1765, with only fifteen of a possible twenty-four works🐬 completed.   

In 1761, the date of the A Mediterranean Harbor at Sunset,  Vernet would have been in either Bayonne or La Rochelle; he is documented in the former July 1759 to July 1761, and then in La Rochelle until July 1762.  However, the present work suggests neither Bayonne or La Rochelle, but reflects instead the harbor views that Vernet had perfected during his long sojourn in Italy, from 1734 to 1753.  As Conisbee notes these views "evoke, rather than describe"  the coast and port of Naples, through the inclusion of various features of the Neapolitan landscape, as, for example, the light house, rocky cove and distant mountains that we see here.²  Vernet combined and recombined these and similar elements in&nbs𒈔p;various ways throughout his career, creating the views that were so popular in his own time and today.  

Emilie Beck Saiello has confirmed the attribution of the present lot on the basis of photographs and will publish it in the catalogue raisonné she is completing for the late Philip Co♔nisbee.

1.  The price recorded in the Getty Provenance Index Database.
2.  P. Conisbee, in exhibition catalogue Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1714-1789, Lon🦩don, The 🌊Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, 1976, [no page numbers].