Vernet's Hunting in the Pontine Marches: A Landscape Exception

Horace Vernet's oil painting 'Hunting in the Pontine Marches' (40 x 54 in., 100 x 137 cm) is featured in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The work, along with its companion piece 'Departure for the Hunt in the Pontine Marshes,' which was highlighted on the blog in 2018, hangs in the museum. Although Vernet, a French painter active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is not known for landscapes, this painting captures the author's attention as an exception. The author admires Vernet's value arrangement, which plays with light and dark to guide the viewer's eye, and the textures on the tree trunks. The piece is also praised as an example of limiting color range, with the most chromatic color used sparingly. The National Gallery of Art provides a high-resolution image for zooming or downloading, which is recommended to appreciate the play of light that doesn't read well in small reproductions.