Born in Strasbourg in Alsace, the son of an engraver and miniaturist of Swiss origins, Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg arrived in Paris in 1755. Although he was to be mainly active as a landscape painter, he received a comprehensive artistic education, studying with the history painter Carle Vanloo, the battle painter Francesco Casanova and the engraver Jean-Georges Wille. Agrée at the Académie Royale in 1763, the same year as his Salon debut, he gained full membership in 1767. He continued to exhibit regularly at the Salon, where his pastoral landscapes, painted with fresh and vivid colours and imbued with a Romantic sensibility, proved very popular with the public. Loutherbourg submitted a total of some eighty works to the Salons between...