Les Baigneuses: A mountainous landscape with bathers at a lake, a man looking on from an outcrop above

The present picture and its pendant, La Tempête (location unknown), were both commissioned from Vernet in 1782 by Mr. Pope, a close friend and notable patron of the artist. According to the artist's Livre de Raison, Pope paid the artist 1,800 livres for the pair in 1783. Pope was a 'marchand de rubans' (textile dealer), who met Vernet in around 1778 and acquired twenty paintings from the artist over the next ten years, many of which he proudly hung in the back of his boutique 'Au Cordon Bleu' at 10 Rue aux Fers, Paris, for all to admire. Among these was the Mediterranean harbour with the artist and family of 1788, sold in these Rooms, 10 July 1998, lot 43 (£420,000). His collection also included numerous paintings from the Flemish and Dutch schools as well as several pictures by other eighteenth-century French artists such as Greuze and Fragonard.