Charles-Franois Grenier de la Croix, called Lacroix de Marseille (?Marseilles c. 1700-?1782 Berlin)

Painted in 1752, this magnificent view of a seaport is among Lacroix de Marseille’s earliest known dated works. It was completed shortly after a painting of similar subject dated 1750, now in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, and regarded as one of his greatest masterpieces (see France in the eighteenth century, exhibition catalogue, London, 1968, p. 86, no. 358), and around the time that he was making grand copies of Claude-Joseph Vernet’s celebrated Times of Day at Uppark, dated 1751. While at Uppark, Lacroix de Marseille reproduced Vernet so faithfully that St. John Gore, in the 1985 exhibition catalogue, felt compelled to comment that the pictures were ‘so exact in every detail of brushwork that were it not for the signatures it would be impossible to distinguish them from the master’s works’ (see G. Jackson-Stops, The Treasure Houses of Great Britain, New Haven and London, 1985, p. 280).

Lacroix de Marseille enjoyed great popularity with both Italian and French clients, yet surprisingly little is known about his life. He is thought to have been born in Marseille circa 1700, and is documented in Rome in 1750, when he encountered the Marquis de Vandières, who was travelling with Germain Soufflot and Charles-Nicolas Cochin, and we know, from the Uppark pictures, that he must have worked very closely with Vernet at that time. When the latter returned to France in 1753, Lacroix remained in Italy for at least another decade, travelling to Naples, where he is recorded in 1757. By 1776, though, he was back in his native France and, according to Pahin de la Blancherie, died in Berlin in 1782.