CLAUDE JOSEPH VERNET.
Claude Joseph Vernet, the father of Carl Vernet, and the grandfather of Horace, was born at Avignon in 1714. He was the son of Antoine Vernet, an obscure painter, who foretold that he would one day render his family illustrious in art, and gave him every advantage that his limited means would permit. Such were the extraordinary talents he exhibited almost in his infancy, that his father regarded him as a prodigy, and dreaming of nothing but seeing him become the greatest historical painter of the age, he resolved to send him to Rome; and having, by great economy, saved a few louis d'or, he put them into Joseph's pocket, when he was about eighteen years of age, and sent him off with a wagoner, who undertook to conduct him to Marseilles.