Mediterranean Port with Men-of-War

Location

Country: Malta
City: Valletta
Place: British High Commission

Pierre Puget was the son of a mason and was apprenticed to a ship-builder at the age of 16. By 1637, he had travelled to Italy and is known to have worked in Rome in 1640, serving as a pupil of the architect and sculptor Pietro da Cortona and working on the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. When he returned to Marseilles in 1643, Puget designed and carved marine decoration for ships, in addition to painting portraits. By the 1660s he received several commissions, including being asked to decorate the sterns of battleships of the Royal French Navy in 1669. He was Director of Decorations for the Navy, based at Toulon until 1679, while also a master-sculptor of the arsenal of the Port de Marseille. He died in 1694 at Fougette, near Marseilles.

Places

Mediterranean Sea, Italy

Subjects

rowing boat, barrel, genre, seascape/coastal scene, man, woman, ensign (ship), flag, bollard, pier, fortification, castle, tower, ship, Man o'War

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Pierre Puget (1620 - 1694)

Title

Mediterranean Port with Men-of-War

Date

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 33.50 cm, width: 83.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Sir Bruce Ingram, 1963

Provenance

Collection of journalist and newspaper editor Sir Bruce Stirling Ingram (1877-1963) and on loan to the Ministry of Works from 1952; from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in 1963

GAC number

1498