The Four Times of Day: Morning

The Four Times of Day: Morning from 1757 is part of a series that allowed Vernet to demonstrate his mastery of different lighting conditions — a kind of atmospheric compendium in which the same landscape type is explored under the distinct illumination of morning, noon, afternoon, and evening. The morning installment captures the first light of day with its characteristic coolness and freshness, before the sun has risen high enough to warm the atmosphere. Vernet's oil technique carefully observed the behavior of light on water and cloud at different times of day and in different weather conditions, building atmospheric effects through careful layering of translucent glazes. The series format had a distinguished precedent in Claude Lorrain's four-landscape compositions and in the prints and paintings recording the times of day that had been a genre staple since the seventeenth century. Painted on copper — an unusual support that gives oil paint exceptional luminosity — these small but technically brilliant works demonstrate Vernet at his most refined, their precious scale suited to intimate cabinet display in the kind of aristocratic interiors for which they were created.

The delicate transition from cool dawn tones to warming sunlight is rendered with characteristic subtlety, capturing the ephemeral quality of early morning illumination.