Landscape with Temple

The career of the Parisian peinture á la gouache et quarelle, Jean-Henri Alexandre Pernet, is somewhat mysterious. He is known to have trained at the Académie Royale de Peinture, registering in 1783 as a twenty –year-old student, who lived with his father, a perfumer, in the Rue d’Argenteuil, At the Académie, he studied with Pierre-Antonine de Machy, whose monumental architectural views of Paris influenced the young artist’s evolving style. Pernet’s work, which is typically composed of architectural and landscape capricci and painted with watercolor and gouache, was exhibited at the Salon de la Correspodance and engraved in color by Laurent Guyot and Jean-Francois Janinet. Pernet is also known to have produced a series of landscapes, engraved by Guyot, which were probably used as decorative models for the ornamentation of boxes and buttons. The exact date of Pernet’s death is uncertain, only known to be after his last dated work of 1789, now in the British Museum, London.
Although he evidently never traveled to Italy, Pernet was acutely aware of the Roman works of French artists, especially Jean-Laurent Legeay and Hubert Robert. Perhaps the illustrated travel journals of Abbé de Saint-Non-also provided sources for Pernet’s fantastic, yet vaguely familiar views. In fact, within his intricate, capricious compositions, Pernet often included actual Roman monuments and sculpture. However, Pernet’s compositions of ancient architectural forms into vast palace ruins, arranged along oblique angles, is most indebted to the engraved work of Piranesi, especially his Vedute di Roma. Pernet interpreted the archeological massiveness of the Roman master’s work in a decidedly picturesque and theatrical manner.
Although he was described as a painter in the Academy lists, the works that are known by him are exclusively drawings. They are often architectural and landscape capricci in a round or an oval format, and they often came in pairs. Guyot or Janinet often reproduced pairs of Pernet’s views in etchings.
This unusually large and detailed garden scene with a temple is typical of Pernet’s work in that it show’s the strong influence of Hubert Robert and, through him, of Piranesi. Pernet’s capricci are usually composed of the same components: picturesque ancient ruins-sharp diagonal perspective like stage sets-peopled with small figures in classical garb, and rendered in cool tones as here. Pernet’s distinctive style of architectural elements, especially sculpture and capitals, is evident in these sheets.