拍品专文
Third and last in an illustrious line of painters, Horace Vernet made his Salon debut in 1812 with two paintings, one of which, "Prise de Glatz", earned him a "médaille d'or". This early success announced the beginning of a prodigious career for a painter whose fame was based largely on two favourite romantic themes: military scenes and orientalist subjects. One of his greatest patrons was Louis-Philippe and it was due to their relationship that Vernet was commissioned to do a series of large battle scenes for the Musée Historique at Versailles inaugurated in June of 1837.
The orientalist aspect of Vernet's career begins in 1833 with the first voyage to Algeria accompanied by the English artist WIlliam Wyld. Vernet was convinced that he had discovered a land unchanged by the Arabs since biblical times and proceded to turn his expressive and fluid romantic technique to religious scenes using the local poulation as his mode,putting Old Testament figures into contemporary Arab dress. In The lion hunter great attention is given to topographical detail as well as to the rendering of material: the silken nose for the donkey, the hunter's striped cotton vest, the lion's rich fur coat. Realistic detail gives immediacy to a scene redolent with biblical allusion. The lion himself is the mascot of several saints, his skin alone a tribute of Hercules and hence of Fortitude. The lion is, above all, the personification of Africa, the continent that Vernet saw as "une mine d'or pour la France". (Thornton, Les Orientalistes p. 172).
The orientalist aspect of Vernet's career begins in 1833 with the first voyage to Algeria accompanied by the English artist WIlliam Wyld. Vernet was convinced that he had discovered a land unchanged by the Arabs since biblical times and proceded to turn his expressive and fluid romantic technique to religious scenes using the local poulation as his mode,putting Old Testament figures into contemporary Arab dress. In The lion hunter great attention is given to topographical detail as well as to the rendering of material: the silken nose for the donkey, the hunter's striped cotton vest, the lion's rich fur coat. Realistic detail gives immediacy to a scene redolent with biblical allusion. The lion himself is the mascot of several saints, his skin alone a tribute of Hercules and hence of Fortitude. The lion is, above all, the personification of Africa, the continent that Vernet saw as "une mine d'or pour la France". (Thornton, Les Orientalistes p. 172).