Seaport by Moonlight

Seaport by Moonlight (French: Un port de mer au clair de lune) is an oil on canvas painted by Claude-Joseph Vernet in 1771, the night scene from a set of four Times of Day; it is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (INV 8334).

Vernet, born in Avignon in 1714, spent some twenty years in Rome painting seaports, storms, calms and moonlit scenes that were especially popular with English aristocrats on the Grand Tour. Recalled to Paris in 1753, he painted for the king the series of the Ports of France on which much of his reputation rests, and he exhibited at the Salon almost every year until his death in 1789. He had already painted a set of the Four Times of the Day in 1757.

This canvas was one of four overdoor paintings representing the parts of the day that Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, commissioned for her pavilion at Louveciennes. The harbour is imaginary. The full moon breaks through a ragged bank of cloud and lays a path of light across the water, where two large ships ride at anchor; on the quay men are fishing, while at right a group gathers round a cooking fire whose warm glow sets off the cool moonlight. The picture was shown at the Salon of 1773 and became widely known through engravings.

During the Revolution the painting was seized as émigré property from the comte d'Artois in November 1794. The noon picture of the set was kept out of the seizure to be exchanged for another Vernet; a 1772 painting in the National Gallery in Prague has been identified with that lost canvas by the art historian Martina Jandlova Soskova. The Louvre picture measures 98 by 164 cm and was included in the 2019 exhibition on the Moon at the Grand Palais.