Charles-François Grenier de Lacroix, called Lacroix de Marseille

With Galerie de Haspe, Paris, by 1953;

Anonymous sale, Paris, Beaussant & Lefèvre, 14 December 2001, lot 70, for 1,180,000 French francs;

With Richard Green, London, by 2022;

Where presumably acquired.

This lively pair of paintings – in an excellent state of preservation – were executed by Charles-François Grenier de Lacroix, called Lacroix de Marseille: the most talented among the landscape painters who followed in the footsteps of Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–1789) in the later eighteenth century. Little is known about the artist's early life or training, as he is not recorded until 1750, when he met the Marquis de Vandières in Rome. It has traditionally been assumed that he studied under Vernet; the two painters were evidently working alongside one another in the Eternal City by 1751, when Lacroix executed four copies after Vernet's Times of Day for Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh, 1st Baronet (c. 1714–1774), which hang today at Uppark House, West Sussex.¹ When Vernet returned to France in 1753, Lacroix’s work began to develop a more distinctive tone of its own, though his presumed master's work undoubtedly remained a guiding influence throughout his subsequent career. 

¹ A set of four, all oil on canvas, each approximately 98 x 137 cm.