Landscape

A landscape of the English or Welsh countryside, painted around 1776, is held at the Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust. During the 1770s, de Loutherbourg was transforming British theatre through his innovations at Drury Lane while simultaneously building his reputation as a landscape painter. His landscapes of this period show him absorbing the English scenery that he encountered during country excursions, filtering it through his continental training in atmospheric effect.

The landscape composition employs the conventional repoussoir of darker foreground elements framing a brighter middle distance and atmospheric far distance. De Loutherbourg's handling of aerial perspective—the progressive lightening and bluing of tones with distance—reflects his sophisticated understanding of atmospheric optics. The brushwork is varied, from detailed foreground vegetation to broader, hazier distance.