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| PHILIPPE JACQUES DE LOUTHERBOURG (Strasbourg 1740 - London 1812)
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| Travellers with hounds and heavily laden mules at a well
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Signed and dated lower right: P.J. de Loutherbourg 1769
Oil on canvas
15 ¿ x 20 ½ in. (38.9 x 52.2 cm.)
This landscape scene is a relatively early work by the Alsatian painter, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg. With its staffage of travellers and mules and Italianate setting, it reveals his interest in Dutch seventeenth-century masters such as Nicholas Berchem and Philips Wouwerman. Works such as this accorded well with the French taste of the time, as it moved away from the more rococo pastoral works of Boucher towards a re-appraisal of Dutch seventeenth-century models. In the 1760s and 70s, for example, Fragonard painted a number of works in the style of Jacob van Ruisdael.
In 1755, Loutherbourg moved to Paris with his family and there he studied under Carle Vanloo and also at the engraving academy of Georges Wille, who encouraged him to study Dutch seventeenth-century art. His early works included landscapes, such as the Colnaghi picture, shipwreck scenes inspired by Vernet and pictures of banditti recalling Salvator Rosa. He was the most prolific painter to exhibit at the Salon between 1762 and 1771, and in 1766 he was elected to the Académie Royal and nominated as a Peintre du Roi. After visiting Marseilles in 1768 and probably Italy, Germany and Switzerland, he arrived in England in 1771. There he worked for David Garick as the chief scene designer at the Drury Lane theatre and soon became the most inventive designer in Europe. He also travelled widely in England and Wales, developing in the 1780s a more atmospheric landscape style. The following decade he concentrated more on history paintings, such as his contributions to Macklin’s Bible, which were to influence J.M.W. Turner and John Martin. He won fame as a painter of battles scenes - see, for example, Battle of the Nile (1800, Tate Britain, London) – which led to his appointment in 1807 as Historical Painter to William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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