Portrait of an Arab man

Horace was the last of a great dynasty of painters, preceded by his father Carle Vernet (1758-1836) and grandfather Joseph Vernet (1714-1789). Born in 1789, he trained with his father and then completed his artistic education with François-André Vincent (1746-1816). A naturally talented painter, prolific draftsman and flamboyant performer, Vernet pursued a brilliant career punctuated by major official commissions, sometimes facilitated by his proximity to Louis-Philippe, to whom he was close even before the King’s accession to power.
His real vocation was military history painting, of which he was to be the greatest representative in France in the 19th century. A faithful narrator obsessed with detail, he depicted the great revolutionary battles as well as the Napoleonic campaigns. The artist's intense dedication to detail is also very present in An Arab man at prayer. The captured emotion in the man’s expression lends an unrivalled verisimilitude to the painting.
France’s expansion into North Africa in the 1830’s offered artists an opportunity to discover these regions before then closed, paving the way for Orientalism which was anchored in reality. Eugene Delacroix travelled to Morocco in 1832 and Vernet to Algeria in 1833. The artist was sent at the request of King Louis-Philippe and, as an official painter, he was received with considerable honours: two battalions were assigned to him for his travels for instance. The experience was of tremendous influence on the remainder of his oeuvre. The drawings he made in situ and the objects he amassed, all featured heavily in his later work, both in his great historical compositions, but also in works on a more intimate scale.