French painter of battle scenes for Napoleon I and of sporting subjects, notably horses, for King Louis XVIII.

The son of the popular landscapist Joseph Vernet, the younger Vernet early exhibited a gift for painting and came to develop an acute eye for natural detail. Although Napoleon commanded him to paint vast battle scenes, such as “Marengo” (1804), his real talent was for intimate genre and for drawing rather than for painting. His long series of fashionable studies, often satirizing contemporary manners and costume, were reproduced by the best engravers of the time. After the restoration of the monarchy, Vernet became court painter to Louis XVIII.