Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, R.A. (Strasbourg 1740-1812 London)

Trained at the Académie Royale by Carle Vanloo among others, Loutherbourg became a highly successful landscape artist who was much admired by his contemporaries. Such was his success that his 1763 submission to the Salon received praise from Denis Diderot. Despite Loutherbourg’s success in France, the artist settled in London in 1771. Loutherbourg’s landscape art often show the strong influence of Dutch Golden Age art, and this is particularly noticeable in the present sheet which brings works by Nicholaes Berchem to mind. This sheet has been dated to circa 1772-1774 by Olivier Lefeuvre and can be compared to two paintings from 1771 in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux (O. Lefeuvre, Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg 1740-1812, Paris, 2012, nos. 98-99) and The Enterprising Shepherd, which was on the art market in Paris in 2009 (ibid., no. 111). Furthermore, the shepherd in this sheet appears in reverse in a drawing offered at Sotheby’s, London, 6 June 2007, lot 178.