(Arles 1734–1784 Marseille)
A pair of harbour scenes,
both signed and dated: J. Henry D’Arles Eleve de Vernet F 1768,
oil on canvas, each 53.2 x 76.8 cm, framed, a pair (2)

Jean-Henry d’Arles was a French landscape painter whose theatrically illuminated landscapes display a close observation of nature and its effects. He won the first prize of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Marseille in 1753. His Italianate sea-side scenes follow in the tradition of classical landscapes established by Claude Lorrain. D’Arles would have also been influenced by Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), whose Tempest he would have seen at the ‘Exhibition du Paysage Francais’ in 1756.

D’Arles predominately worked in the area in and around Marseille. The French contemporary taste was for idealised scenes foreign to their own experience. There was a demand for enchanted views of bays of Baiae and Naples, mountains, caves, storms, shipwrecks, because town-dwellers were unlikely to ever witness these things in their own lives. In addition, Italianate scenes were popular with aristocratic clientele as they reflected the places they had visited on the Grand Tour. The present painting has a carefully balanced composition with its framing trees and hills, united architecture and landscape, misty distance and harmonious light, placing d’Arles within the tradition of Franco-Italian landscape painting.