CHARLES FRANCOIS LACROIX (LACROIX DE MARSEILLE) (c.1700-1782)

Port Scene (1764)

Ship Running Aground (1764)

Oil on copper 23 x 30,5 cm

Private collection

Little is known about the artist’s early life or when he exactly arrived in Italy, as he is not recorded until 1750 when the marquis de Vandieres met him in Rome. A painting from that period : A View of a Seaport signed and dated Grenier de La Croix, fecit Rom 1750 exists in the Toledano Museum of Art, Ohio, USA. In the absence of any documentary evidence, it has been traditionally assumed that Lacroix was a pupil of Claude-Joseph Vernet and that they were working side by side in Rome by 1751 when Lacroix executed four copies of Vernet’s work The Four Times of Day (Uppark, Sussex, UK) Lacroix’s copies are virtually undistinguishable from Vernet’s originals, which may help to explain why he only emerged from obscurity when his and Vernet’s paths separeted in 1753. Lacroix spent ten more years in Rome before returning to France where he is recorded in 1776. According to Pahin de la Blancherie he died in Berlin in 1782.

The atmosphere of one painting is vigorous, the air bracing. In the other the evening is humid and heavy. Yet this two compositions have similarities. Active foreground figures appear to be silhouetted against the sea, and one dark side of each provides a partial frame for the heart of the painting: the rigging of a tall ship in one and a fortified harbour in the other. The key to the difference in feeling lies in the manner in which Lacroix has treated the skies. Towering clouds seem to expand the heavens in the storm whereas in the calm evening the sun sheds a golden light to emphasize the heat and the mist.