Work and Art

The Old Port of Marseilles has always been the economic center of the city.
Joseh VERNEY’s paintings show its commercial activities before the extension of the new harbour in the XIXth century to the northern district of the city when the Old Port became too small.

Joseh Verney

For twenty years Joseh Vernet (1714 – 1789) lived in Rome, producing views of seaports, storms, calms, moonlights, becoming especially popular with English aristocrats. In 1745 he married an Englishwoman. In 1753 he was recalled to Paris where he integrated the royal painting academy: by royal command (King Louis the XVth commissioned a serie of the ports of France), he executed the series of the seaports of France (now in the Louvre and the Musée national de la Marine).

Joseh Verney became a famous  navy painter. In his two paintings of the Port of Marseilles, he obeyed the official instructions which were to show the numerous trading ships of all kinds and of all nations constantly present in Marseilles.
Two views of the port were exposed in the « Salon » (exhibition) in 1755.

The paintings of Marseilles (1754)
 
At that time Marseilles was rich and dynamic but it was not a cultural capital.
With a certain conventionality in design, proper to his day, Joseh Verney allied the results of constant and honest observation of natural effects of atmosphere, which he rendered with unusual pictorial art.








 The port of Marseilles  (1754)

With a certain conventionality in design, proper to his days, Joseh Verney allied the results of constant and honest observation of natural effects of atmosphere, which he rendered with unusual pictorial art.

Perhaps no painter of landscapes or sea-pieces has ever made the human figure so completely a part of the scene depicted or so important a factor in his design.
The Oriental who seem to wear turkish clothes are easy to recognize. Marseilles had excellent relationships with the Sublime Gate, and detained the monopoly of the exchanges with all the countries under ottoman domination, from Egypt to Greece.
Marseilles traded with the Ports of the Barbary coast, i.e. Libya and North Africa as well as Italy and Spain.
Marseilles was then the first harbour of France.The number of merchant ships is not exagerated by the painter : some years two thousand merchant ships passed in transit.

The architecture of the port 
 
The view is taken from the pavilion of the clock. In front of us, we can see the dock of the old port, which is limitedby the tower of Saint John’s fort (Fort Saint Jean). Sailing boats with their masts hide the façades of the houses. However the town hall’s façade can be easely seen, with its triangular pediments and its medallion sculpted by the famous sculptor Pierre Puget (1620 – 1694).
On the other side of the channel, 40 meters wide, we can see the mound called « the Moor’s head » where there is nowadays apark ,called « Pharo ».

In the foreground, there is the façade of the Arsenal of the galleys which was a real city in the city.
But at that time, there were only eleven galleys in Marseilles because since 1748, Toulon is the center of military navy.

The jobs

 
We can see many jobs linked to the ships:
On a dock, a ship is unloading corn because the Provence was a weak producer of cereals and had to import it from the south of Italy and the Levant.

Near the ship a man is sifting the grain. He belongs to a guild the work of which was to sort the products which might contain impurities.

Other jobs linked to the port’s life are represented on this painting such as the workers who weigh the goods. They were under the royal protection and had the right to have a sword. One of them with a red jacket can be seen on the left.

There are the porters who can be recognized because of their bare feet : they had the privilege of the transport of the goods loaded or unloaded on the ships.

On the left handside, a man dressed in black but with lace slings is watching the marking of a package.

On the right of the group of Turks, another man , dressed in a similar way, is verifying the straps of a canvas bag. They might belong to the Chamber of Commerce which played the part of middleman between the Royal Power and the Ports.

Behind the Oriental, a man is passing with a tuna fish under his arm. The guild of the fishermen iwas composed of two hundred and sixty four boats and two thousand men.

As a conclusion, we can show two pictures of the Old Port of Marseilles today where the fishermen sell their fish and A picture of the « Belem » in the Old Port in September 2011 evocating the times of the sailing boats which made the wealth of the city. The Belem was a portuguese shool boat bought by the city of Nantes to Portugal.