Morning: Levantine merchants on a quay below a castle, a three-master at anchor beyond; and Evening: Fisherfolk drawing in their nets, a port beyond

Lacroix de Marseille’s early practice was closely linked with that of Claude-Joseph Vernet, with whom he probably worked in Italy. So talented a pupil did he become that the copies he made of Vernet’s four Times of Day for Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh, 1st Baronet (c. 1714-1774) at Uppark House in 1751 were so perfect in their replication and deemed ‘so exact in every detail of brushwork that were it not for the signatures it would be impossible to distinguish them from the master’s works’ (see G. Jackson-Stops, The Treasure Houses of Great Britain, New Haven and London, 1985, p. 280). After Vernet’s return to France in 1753, Lacroix’s work began to develop a more distinctive tone of its own, though his presumed master's work remained a guiding influence on him throughout his subsequent career. The figures in Morning here, for example, particularly the bearded man in a red kaftan, together with the figure leaning on the mooring post smoking a pipe, can be found in works attributed to Vernet, like the Sea Port of circa 1760 in the National Gallery, London.