Auguste Pernot

Auguste Pernot, active in the 19th century Seascape, 1846 Oil on canvas, 53 x 69 cm   A new conception of landscape takes shape between the 18th and 19th centuries: nature bursts into art and reveals itself in all its majestic energy. In addition to countryside views, mountain panoramas, and exotic backdrops, in the 19th century, the sea became one of the favorite subjects of Romantic painters. For centuries, the sea had been confined to decorative backgrounds and was depicted in a rather implausible way, but Romantic artists saw the sea as the emblem of absolute freedom and solitude; capable of triggering strong and contrasting feelings, it amazes for its immensity and the violence with which it manifests itself. Also in this case we notice how the marine landscape becomes the protagonist at the expense of human figures, barely perceptible aboard the ships that sail the waters. The sailing ships of different sizes stand out along a luminous expanse that fades from blue to golden, under a sun that slowly begins to set on the right. The changing colors are repeated in the clear sky, in the barely sketched clouds, on the rocks and on the boats; nature and man coexist peacefully in this work, dividing the scenario without prevailing over each other. The luminous plays give life to a wide palette of colors, such as on the surface of the reddish rock in the center of the painting, a true watershed both literally and in terms of spatial subdivision. The theme of the sea could be as mutable as the element itself is in reality: the perpetual motion, the continuous change of shapes and colors, the variability of atmospheric conditions, from serene to stormy, make it an ideal subject for the sensitivity and freedom of Romantic painters. The examples of nineteenth-century paintings in which the sea rises to protagonist are many, but among the most famous that can be mentioned we find Caspar David Friedrich's Ice Sea, Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, William Turner's The Fighting Temeraire and Camille Corot's view of the cliffs of Le Havre, perhaps the closest to our work as a subject but distant from the point of view of pictorial rendering. From this point of view, the precedents must be sought in French landscape painting of a few years earlier: Jean-Louis de Marne (1752-March 24, 1829) and François Alexandre Pernot (1793-1865), who shares the same surname as Auguste, are two of the French artists in whom we find stylistic features closer to those of our Seascape.