Seascape at Sunset

Joseph Vernet signed and dated this canvas in 1774, and it repeats a picture he had already painted for someone else. The original, Evening, with fishermen coming home, was one of four times of day he made for Madame du Barry's pavilion at Louveciennes, and the Louvre has placed it on long-term loan with the French Senate.

This replica had a companion of its own, a moonlit seascape that in turn repeats another picture of the du Barry series. It hangs in Avignon, Vernet's birthplace, in the Musée Calvet, and it carries the letters MNR. In France they mark works recovered from Germany after the Second World War whose owners were never found, kept by the national museums until they can be returned.

Here the sun goes down behind a tall ship at anchor in the harbour, and on the shore fishermen sort their catch. Victor and Hélène Lyon gave the painting to the state in 1961, and it reached the Louvre in 1977.