Portrait of Carle Vernet

Art Historical Context

This striking lithograph, created in 1817 by Horace Vernet, captures a portrait of his father, renowned painter Carle Vernet. Executed in black on ivory wove paper, the work measures just over eight inches in height and exemplifies the intimate scale often favored in early print portraits. As a lithograph, it represents one of the earliest artistic uses of this revolutionary medium, which had been invented only two decades earlier and allowed artists to draw directly onto stone for remarkably fluid and expressive reproductions. Horace Vernet, who would later become celebrated for his dynamic ...