such as the Capture of the Smahla and the Capture of Constantine, were well received by other French people, as they were vivid depictions of their army in the heat of battle. After the fall of the July Monarchy during the Revolution of 1848, Vernet discovered a new patron in Napoléon III of France. He continued to paint representations of the heroic French army during the Second Empire and maintained his commitment to and realistic way. He accompanied the French Army during the Crimean War, producing several paintings, truthfully including one of the Battle of the Alma, which was not as well received as his earlier paintings. One well known and possibly apocryphal anecdote maintains that when Vernet was asked to remove a certain obnoxious general from one of his paintings, he replied, "I am a painter of history, sire, and I will not violate the truth," hence demonstrating his fidelity to representing war. Vernet also developed an interest in daguerreotype photography. He took photographs in Egypt as reference material for his paintings, and during a stop at Malta in March 1840 while en route to Egypt, he took the earliest known photographs of the island at Fort Manoel. Today these early photographs are believed to be lost. Vernet died in his hometown of Paris in 1863. Literary references In Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims to be related to Vernet, stating, "My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.", without further clarifying whether this is Claude Joseph Vernet, Carle Vernet, or Horace Vernet. Gallery References Further reading Dayot, Armand (1898). Les Vernet : Joseph—Carle—Horace. Paris: A. Magnier. Harkett, Daniel and Katie Hornstein, eds, (2017). Horace Vernet and the Thresholds of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England. Ruutz-Rees, Janet E. (Janet Emily) (1880). Horace Vernet. New York: Scribner and Welford. Sessions, Jennifer E. (2011), By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria. Cornell University Press. 1789 births 1863 deaths 18th-century French painters 19th-century French painters Painters from Paris Burials at Montmartre Cemetery French male painters Knights of the Holy Sepulchre Members of the Académie des beaux-arts Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Orientalist painters Military art 19th-century French photographers Pioneers of photography 18th-century French male artists French war artists