Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Seaport with Fortress

Preview image of work. oil on canvas, Seaport with Fortress 173

1813.31

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Seaport with Fortress

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Artist

Charles-François Grenier de LaCroix (Lacroix de Marseille) (ca. 1700 - 1782)

Title

Seaport with Fortress

Creation Date

1754

Century

18th century

Dimensions

13 9/16 in. x 25 3/16 in. (34.5 cm. x 64 cm.)

Object Type

painting

Creation Place

Europe, France

Medium and Support

oil on canvas

Credit Line

Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III

Copyright

Public Domain

Accession Number

1813.31

Charles-Francois Grenier de LaCroix studied in Rome under Claude-Joseph Vernet, one of Europe’s great eighteenth-century landscape painters until 1753. Painted the next year, Seaport with Fortress echoes Vernet’s methods of composition and technique with some subject matter that LaCroix appears to have drawn directly from the work of his teacher. In Seaport with Fortress as in his other seascapes, LaCroix creates an ambitiously descriptive composition: fishermen tend their nets on a shore full of human activity before a military stronghold rendered in soft colors with ethereal light. The massive fortress, however, serves to remind viewers of the importance of trade and continued naval and military presence as European countries sought to increase and maintain control over their empires. When Sarah and James Bowdoin III acquired this picture in Paris around 1806, they sought to associate themselves as collectors with artistic European traditions as part of a cultured “Old World.”