The City and Bay of Toulon

Toulon was the base of the French navy in the Mediterranean, and it is the only port Vernet painted three times for the king. There is a view of the arsenal, dated 1755, and one of the old port from 1757. This one, from 1756, pulls back from the dockyards. When it was shown at the Salon of 1757, the booklet described it as the city and the roadstead in the morning, seen from a country house halfway up the mountain behind Toulon.

So the harbour and the ships in the roadstead lie far off, and the foreground belongs to the townspeople, arriving on horseback and by carriage at their bastides, the country houses of Provence, with a fountain and a terrace in the shade of a tree. In 1937 the Louvre placed most of the series on deposit with the Musée de la Marine, the naval museum. This canvas and the entrance to the port of Marseille were the two it kept.