A moonlit harbor scene with a fisherman and figures seated around a fire, shipping beyond

Vernet's marine nocturns were among his most original compositions but perhaps due to the skill and subtlety required to emulate them, they were not widely produced by his studio. Often painted as part of a series of the times of the day, the present painting, Night, is wholly original in the grouping of the figures gathered round the fire on the right, though the crouching figure tending the caldron recalls a similar figure in a nocturnal scene in the Palais du Sènat, Paris, which was once part of a set of five canvases commissioned from Vernet in 1771 by Madame du Barry for the Pavillon de Louvciennes (see F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Joseph Vernet, 1926, II, p. 21, no. 934, fig. 223).