When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Sir William Davenant,
manager of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, discarded the
'traverses' and tapestries which had theretofore been accepted as
sufficient for the purposes of stage illusion, and substituted regular
scenes 'painted in perspective,' without doubt there were to be found
many conservative old playgoers who lifted up their voices against the
startling innovation, and prophesied the approaching downfall of the
drama. If the grandsons present marvelled how elder generations could
for so long have gone without such useful and necessary appliances,
assuredly the grandsires were complaining that now things had come to a
pretty pass indeed, when a parcel of beardless, empty-pated boys, not
content with stage fittings such as had been esteemed good and
sufficient by the late Mr. William Shakespeare and his great
brother-dramatists, demanded foolish paintings and idle garniture, that
diverted attention from the efforts of the players and the purpose of
the playwrights, and had never been dreamt of, and would never have been
tolerated in the good, and simple, and palmy days gone by.
Unquestionably, the first 'painting in perspective' brought upon the
boards was, in the judgment of many,[16] the thin end of a wedge, which,
as it thickened, was certain to drive forth and destroy all that was
intellectually and vitally precious in the drama, and to lead the way to
a last scene of all in the eventful history of the stage, which should
be 'second childishness and mere oblivion.'
[16] 'I decidedly concur with Malone in the general conclusion that
painted moveable scenery was unknown on our early stage; and it is a
fortunate circumstance for the poetry of our old plays that it was so:
the imagination of the auditor only was appealed to, and we owe to the
absence of painted canvas many of the finest descriptive passages in
Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and immediate followers. The
introduction of scenery gives the date to the commencement of the
decline of our dramatic poetry.'--_Annals of the Stage_, by J. Payne
Collier, vol. iii. p. 366.
But the scene-painter having set foot within the theatre was not to be
expelled. The intruder soon won for himself a large popularity; held his
ground against criticism and opposition. He was no mere journeyman
dauber. From the first he had taken distinct rank as an artist. Lustrous
names adorn the muster-roll of scene-painters. Inigo Jones planned
machinery and painted scenes for the masques, written by Ben Jonson,
for performance before Anne of Denmark and the Court of James the First.
Evelyn lauds the 'very glorious scenes and perspectives, the work of Mr.
Streeter,' serjeant-painter to King Charles the Second. In February
1664, the Diarist saw Dryden's _Indian Queen_ acted 'with rich scenes as
the like had never been seen here, or haply, except rarely, elsewhere on
a mercenary theatre.' Mr. Pepys--most devoted of playgoers--notes
occasionally of particular plays, that 'the machines are fine and the
paintings very pretty.' In October 1667, he records that he sat in the
boxes for the first time in his life, and discovered that from that
point of view 'the scenes do appear very fine indeed, and much better
than in the pit,' to which part of the house he ordinarily resorted. The
names of the artists who won Mr. Pepys' applause have not come down to
us. But previously to 1679, one Robert Aggas, a painter of some fame,
was producing scenes for the theatre in Dorset Gardens. Nicholas Thomas
Dall, a Danish landscape-painter, settled in London in 1760, was engaged
as scene-painter at Covent Garden Theatre, and was elected an Associate
of the Royal Academy in 1771. For the same theatre, John Richards, a
Royal Academician, appointed secretary to the Academy in 1778, painted
scenes for many years. Michael Angelo Rooker, pupil of Paul Sanby, and
one of the first Associates of the Academy, was scene-painter at the
Haymarket. Other names of note might be mentioned before the modern
reputations of Roberts and Stanfield, Beverley and Callcott, Grieve and
Telbin are approached; and especially over one intermediate name are we
desirous of lingering a little. The story of the scene-painter of the
last century, who was well known to his contemporaries as 'the ingenious
Mr. DE LOUTHERBOURG,' presents incidents of singularity and interest
that will probably be found to warrant our turning to it for purposes of
inquest and comment.
The biographers of Philip James de Loutherbourg are curiously disagreed
as to the precise period of his birth. Five different writers have
assigned five different dates to that occurrence: 1728, 1730, 1734,
1740, and 1741; and it has been suggested, by way of explanation of this
diversity, that the painter's fondness for astrological studies may have
induced him to vary occasionally the date of his birth, in order that he
might indulge in a plurality of horoscopes, and in such way better the
chance of his predictions being justified by the actual issue of events.
He was born, at Strasbourg, the son of a miniature painter, who died at
Paris in 1768. Intended by his father for the army, while his mother
desired that he should become a minister of the Lutheran Church, he was
educated at the College of Strasbourg in languages and mathematics.
Subsequently he chose his own profession, studying under Tischbein the
elder, then under Vanloo and Francesco Casanova; the latter, a painter
of battle pieces after the style of Bourgognone. By his landscapes
exhibited at the Louvre, De Loutherbourg acquired fame in Paris, and in
1763 was elected a member of the French Academy of Painting, being then
eight years below the prescribed age for admission to that distinction,
say the biographers who date his birth from 1740. Quitting France, he
travelled in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and in 1771 came to
England, moved hitherward probably by the opinion then prevalent both at
home and abroad, that (as Edwards puts it in his Anecdotes of Painting)
'some natural causes prevented the English from becoming masters either
in painting or sculpture.' Shortly after his arrival in England he was
engaged by Garrick to design and paint scenes and decorations for Drury
Lane Theatre, at a salary of £500; a sum considerably larger than had
been thitherto paid to any artist for such services.
Of gorgeous scenery and gay dresses Garrick was as fond as any manager
of our own day; he knew that these were never-failing allurements to the
general public. Yet as a rule he confined his spectacle to the
after-pieces; did not, after the modern fashion, illustrate and decorate
what he regarded as the legitimate entertainments of the theatre. For
new as for old plays, the stock scenery of the house generally sufficed,
and some of the scenes employed were endowed with a remarkable
longevity. Tate Wilkinson, writing in 1790, mentions a scene as then in
use which he remembered so far back as the year 1747. 'It has wings and
flat of Spanish figures at full length, and two folding doors in the
middle. I never see those wings slide on but I feel as if seeing my old
acquaintance unexpectedly.' Of the particular plays assisted by De
Loutherbourg's brush, small account has come down to us. They were, no
doubt, chiefly of a pantomimic and ephemeral kind. For the 'Christmas
Tale,' produced at Drury Lane in 1773--the composition of which has been
generally assigned to Garrick, though probably due to Charles Dibdin--De
Loutherbourg certainly painted scenes, and the play enjoyed a
considerable run, thanks rather to his merits than the author's. Some
years later, in 1785, for the scenery of O'Keeffe's _Omai_, produced at
Covent Garden Theatre, the painter furnished the designs, for which he
was paid by the manager one thousand pounds, says Mr. J.T. Smith; one
hundred pounds, says Mr. O'Keeffe; so stories differ! The scenery of
_Omai_ was appropriate to the then newly discovered islands in the South
Pacific, and the play concluded with a kind of apotheosis of Captain
Cook. In the course of _Omai_, Wewitzer, the actor who played a chief
warrior of the Sandwich Islands, delivered a grand harangue in
_gibberish_, which of course, for all the audience knew to the contrary,
was the proper language of the natives; a sham English translation of
the speech being printed with the book of the songs. The harangue was
received with enormous applause!
As a scene-painter, De Loutherbourg was decidedly an innovator and
reformer. He was the first to use set-scenes, and what are technically
known as 'raking pieces.' Before his time the back scene was invariably
one large 'flat' of strained canvas extending the whole breadth and
height of the stage. He also invented transparent scenes, introducing
representations of moonlight, sunshine, fire, volcanoes, etc., and
effects of colour by means of silk screens of various hues, placed
before the foot and side lights. He was the first to represent mists, by
suspending gauzes between the scene and the audience. He made something
of a mystery of the artifices he had recourse to, was careful to leave
behind him at the theatre no paper or designs likely to reveal his
plans, and declined to inform any one beforehand as to the nature of the
illusions he desired to produce. He secretly held small cards in his
hand which he now and then consulted to refresh his recollection, as his
assistants carried out his instructions.
After Garrick had quitted the stage (in 1776) and sold his share in the
management of Drury Lane to Sheridan and his partners, it was proposed
to De Loutherbourg to continue in his office of chief scene-painter, his
salary being reduced one half. This illiberal scale of remuneration the
artist indignantly declined, and forthwith left the theatre. He is said,
however, by Parke in his _Musical Memoirs_, to have painted the scenes
for the successful burletta of _The Camp_, produced by Sheridan, at
Drury Lane, in 1778.[17] But he now devoted himself more exclusively to
the production of easel-pictures. He had, in 1773, become a contributor
to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. In 1780 he was elected an
Associate; in the following year he arrived at the full honours of
academicianship. Peter Pindar, in his 'Lyrical Odes to the Royal
Academicians for 1782,' finds a place for De Loutherbourg. Having
denounced the unlikeness of Mason Chamberlin's portraits, he satirizes
the style of art of the landscape painter:--
'And Loutherbourg, when Heaven so wills,
To make brass skies and golden hills,
With marble bullocks in glass pastures grazing:
Thy reputation too will rise,
And people gaping with surprise,
Cry "Monsieur Loutherbourg is most amazing!"'
[17] Mr. Puff in the _Critic_, giving a specimen of 'the puff direct' in
regard to a new play, says: 'As to the scenery, the miraculous powers of
Mr. De Loutherbourg are universally acknowledged. In short, we are at a
loss which to admire most, the unrivalled genius of the author, the
great attention and liberality of the managers, the wonderful abilities
of the painter, or the incredible exertions of all the performers.'
And in another ode he derides the artist's pictures as 'tea-boards,'
'varnished waiters,' and avows that his rocks are 'paste-board,' while
his trees resemble 'brass wigs,' and his fleecy flocks 'mops.'
Probably the quiet of his studio oppressed our painter somewhat. The
simple effects attainable in an easel-picture did not satisfy him. He
missed the appliances of the stage: the coloured lights, the
transparent scenes, the descending gauzes, and cleverly combined
set-pieces. He would not go back to Drury Lane, however; as to that he
was fully determined. He would not toil for ungrateful managers, or
paint backgrounds merely to supplement and enrich the exertions of the
actors. He decided upon providing London with a new entertainment; upon
opening an exhibition that should be _all_ scene painting.
Charles Dibdin, the famous sea song writer, who was also a dramatist, a
composer of music, an actor, a scene painter, and a manager, had
constructed in Exeter Change what he whimsically called 'The Patagonian
Theatre:' in truth, a simple puppet-show, upon the plan of that
contrived years before by Mr. Powell, under the Piazza, Covent Garden,
and concerning which Steele had written humorously in the _Spectator_.
Dibdin, assisted by one Hubert Stoppelaer, humorist and caricaturist,
wrote miniature plays for the doll performers, recited their parts,
composed the music, played the accompaniments upon a smooth-toned organ,
and painted the scenes. The stage was about six feet wide and eight feet
deep; the puppets some ten inches high; the little theatre was divided
into pit, boxes, and gallery, and held altogether about two hundred
persons. For half a century no exhibition of the kind had appeared in
London. The puppet show was old enough to be a complete novelty to the
audience of the day. For a time it thrived wonderfully; then managers
and public seem both, by degrees, to have grown weary. Dibdin and his
friend departed; the exhibition fell into the hands of incompetent
persons; then closed its doors. The dolls, properties, scenery, and
dresses were brought to the hammer by merciless creditors; and there was
an end of the puppet-show. In 1782 De Loutherbourg took the theatre for
the exhibition of his EIDOPHUSIKON.
De Loutherbourg had professedly two objects in view: to display his
skill as a scene-painter well versed in dioramic effects, and to
demonstrate to the English people the beauties of their own country. He
averred 'that no English landscape-painter needed foreign travel to
collect grand prototypes for his study.' The lakes of Cumberland, the
rugged scenery of North Wales, and the mountainous grandeur of Scotland,
furnished, he said, inexhaustible occupation for the pencil. He opposed
the prejudice then rife among artists and amateurs alike, that England
afforded no subjects for the higher display of the painter's art. He
confined the Eidophusikon for the most part to the exhibition of English
landscapes under different conditions of light and shadow.
A chief view exhibited was from the summit of One Tree Hill, Greenwich.
There was cleverness evinced in the selection of this landscape. A large
public are always prepared to be pleased when they are shown something
with which they are well acquainted. Each spectator found himself, as
it were, individually appealed to. Each had seen One Tree Hill, and
could bring to bear upon the subject his own personal knowledge and
observation, and so test and certify to the painter's skill. The view
was a set-scene with a moveable sky at the back: a large canvas twenty
times the surface of the stage, stretched on frames, and rising
diagonally by means of a winding machine. De Loutherbourg excelled in
his treatment of clouds; he secured in this way ample room and verge
enough to display his knowledge and ingenuity. By regulating the action
of his windlass he could control the movements of his clouds, allow them
to rise slowly from the horizon and sail obliquely across the heavens,
or drive them swiftly along, according to their supposed density and the
power to be attributed to the wind. An arrangement of set-pieces cut in
pasteboard represented the objects in the middle distance: the cupolas
of Greenwich Hospital, the groups of trees in the park, the towns of
Greenwich and Deptford, and the shipping in the Pool; due regard being
had to size and colour, so that the laws of perspective in distance and
atmosphere might not be outraged; the immediate foreground being
constructed of cork broken into rugged and picturesque forms, and
covered with minute mosses and lichens, 'producing,' says a critic of
the period, 'a captivating effect amounting indeed to reality.'
In his method of illuminating his handiworks, De Loutherbourg was
especially adroit. He abandoned the unnatural system (introduced by
Garrick on his return from the Continent in 1765) of lighting the stage
by means of a flaming line of footlights, and ranged his lamps above the
proscenium, out of sight of the audience. Before his lamps he placed
slips of stained glass--yellow, red, green, blue, and purple; and by
shifting these, or happily combining them, was enabled to tint his
scenes so as to represent various hours of the day and different actions
of light. His 'Storm at Sea with the loss of the _Halsewell_,
East-Indiaman,' was regarded as the height of artistic mechanism. The
ship was a perfect model, correctly rigged, and carrying only such sail
as the situation demanded. The lightning quivered through the
transparent canvas of the sky. The waves, carved in soft wood from
models made in clay, coloured with great skill and highly varnished to
reflect the lightning, rose and fell with irregular action, flinging the
foam now here, now there, diminishing in size and fading in colour as
they receded from the spectator. Then we read--'De Loutherbourg's genius
was as prolific in imitations of nature to astonish the ear as to charm
the sight. He introduced a new art: _the picturesque of sound_.' That is
to say, he simulated thunder by shaking one of the lower corners of a
large thin sheet of copper suspended by a chain; the distant firing of
signals of distress he imitated by striking, suddenly, a large
tambourine with a sponge affixed to a whalebone spring--- the
reverberations of the sponge producing a curious echo, as from cloud to
cloud, dying away in the distance. The rushing sound of the waves was
effected by turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted
with shelves, and containing small shells, peas, and shot; while two
discs of strained silk, suddenly pressed together, emitted a hollow,
whistling sound, in imitation of loud gusts of wind. Cylinders loosely
charged with seed and small shot, lifted now at one end, now at the
other, so as to allow the contents to fall in a pattering stream,
represented the noise of hail and rain. The moon was formed by a
circular aperture cut in a tin box containing a powerful Argand lamp,
which was placed at the back of the scene, and brought near or carried
far from the canvas as the luminary was supposed to be shining brightly
or to be veiled by clouds. These contrivances, from a modern point of
view, may strike the reader as constituting quite the A B C of
theatrical illusion. But then it must be remembered that they were, for
the most part, distinctly the inventions of De Loutherbourg, and, upon
their first introduction, were calculated to impress the public of his
day very remarkably.
For two seasons De Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon, exhibited at the
Patagonian Theatre in Exeter Change, and afterwards at a house in Panton
Square, was attended with singular success. Crowds flocked to the new
entertainment; the artist world especially delighting in it. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who was a frequent visitor, loudly extolled Mr. De.
Loutherbourg's ingenuity; recommending him to the patronage of the most
eminent men of the time, and counselling all art-students to attend the
exhibition as a school of the wonderful effects of nature.
Gainsborough's ready sympathies were completely enlisted. For a time,
after his manner, he could talk of nothing else, think of nothing else;
and he passed evening after evening at the exhibition. He even
constructed a miniature Eidophusikon of his own--moved thereto by De
Loutherbourg's success and the beauty of a collection of stained glass,
the property of one Mr. Jarvis--and painted various landscapes upon
glass and transparent surfaces, to be lighted by candles at the back,
and viewed through a magnifying lens upon the peep-show principle. But
at last the fickle public wearied of the Eidophusikon, as it had been
wearied of Mr. Dibdin's puppets. The providers of amusement had, in
those days, to be ever stirring in the production of novelties. The
sight-seeing public was but a limited and exhaustible body then, little
recruited by visitors from the provinces or travellers from the
Continent. Long runs of plays or other entertainments--the rule with
us--were then almost unknown. The Eidophusikon ceased to attract. The
amount received at the doors was at last insufficient to defray the
expenses of lighting the building. It became necessary to close the
exhibition and provide a new entertainment. Soon the room in Exeter
Change was crowded with visitors. Wild beasts were on view, and all
London was gaping at them.
Meanwhile De Loutherbourg prospered as an artist. His reputation grew;
his pictures were in request; he was honoured with the steady patronage
of King George III., and was personally an acknowledged favourite at
court: a thoroughly successful man indeed. Then we come down to the year
1789, and find the artist of the Eidophusikon assuming a new character.
He has become a physician--a seer--a fanatic--and, it must be said, a
quack; a disciple of Mesmer, a friend of Cagliostro; practising animal
magnetism, professing to cure all diseases, and indulging in
vaticination and second sight.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century, credulity and imposition
shook hands heartily and held a great festival. Throughout civilized
Europe a sort of carnival of empiricism prevailed. Quack was king. A
spurious leaven of charlatanism was traceable in politics, in science,
in religion--pervaded all things indeed. The world was mad to cheat or
to be cheated. The mountebank enjoyed his saturnalia. Never had he
exhibited his exploits before an audience so numerous and so
sympathetic--so eager to be swindled, so liberal in rewarding the
swindler. Gravely does Miss Hannah More address Mr. Horace Walpole,
concerning what she terms the 'demoniacal mummery'--'the operation of
fraud upon folly' which then occupied the country. 'In vain do we boast
of the enlightened eighteenth century, and conceitedly talk as if human
reason had not a manacle left about her, but that philosophy had broken
down all the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, and superstition; and
yet, at this very time, Mesmer has got a hundred thousand pounds by
animal magnetism in Paris, and Mainaduc is getting as much in London.
There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less.
Lavater's physiognomy books sell at fifteen guineas a set. The diving
[divining?] rod is still considered as oracular in many places. Devils
are cast out by seven ministers; and, to complete the disgraceful
catalogue, slavery is vindicated in print and defended in the House of
Peers! Poor human nature, when wilt thou come to years of discretion?'
Mr. Walpole writes back (he has always a _proper_ tone for Miss More,
reserving his levity and license for less staid correspondents):--'Alas!
while Folly has a shilling left, there will be enthusiasts and quack
doctors;' and he adds, airing his pet affectation--a hatred of royalty,
a love for republicanism--'and there will be slaves while there are
kings or sugar-planters.'
Joseph Balsamo--more generally known by his pseudonym of Count Alexander
De Cagliostro, expelled from France, after nine months' durance in the
Bastille, on account of his complicity in the diamond necklace fraud and
scandal--had taken refuge in England, bringing with him a long list of
quackeries and impostures; among them, his art of making old women young
again; his system of 'Egyptian freemasonry,' as he termed it, by virtue
of which the ghosts of the departed could be beheld by their surviving
friends; and the secrets and discoveries of the great Dr. Mesmer in the
so-called science of animal magnetism. Walpole at once proclaims the man
a rascal, and proposes to have him locked up for his mummeries and
impositions. Miss More laments that people will talk of nothing else.
'Cagliostro and the cardinal's necklace,' she writes, 'spoil all
conversation, and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepys's last
night' A discussion of such subjects was by no means compatible with
Miss More's notion of a good evening.
What could have induced simple-minded Mr. De Loutherbourg to put trust
in this arch-juggler? Can it have been that from the painter's native
Strasbourg had come to him unimpeachable accounts of Cagliostro's feats
during his stay there, which had preceded his nefarious expedition to
Paris? But the artist is ever excitable, receptive, impressible--the
ready prey of the dealer in illusion and trickery. De Loutherbourg is
soon at the feet of the quack Gamaliel; soon he is proclaiming himself
an inspired physician, practising mesmerism. Cosway and his wife
declared themselves clairvoyants. Other painters of the period were
dreaming dreams and seeing visions. Nor was it only the artist world
that took up with, and made much of, Count Cagliostro and his strange
doings. Wiser people than Mr. De Loutherbourg were led astray by the
mountebank, though they did not wander so far from the paths of reason
and right, nor publish so glaringly the fact of their betrayal into
error. Cagliostro was the rage of the hour. The disciples of Dr. Mesmer
were without number. It was in ridicule of general rather than class
credulity that Mrs. Inchbald wrote (or adapted) her comedy of _Animal
Magnetism_, produced on the stage of Covent Garden in 1788.
A curious fanatical pamphlet, by one Mary Pratt, of Portland Street,
Marylebone, was published in 1789. It was entitled, _A List of Curses
performed by Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, of Hammersmith Terrace,
without Medicine: By a Lover of the Lamb of God_, and was dedicated to
the Archbishop of Canterbury in very high-flown terms. Mr. De
Loutherbourg was described as 'a gentleman of superior abilities, well
known in the scientific and polite assemblies for his brilliancy of
talents as a philosopher and painter,' who, with his wife, had been made
proper recipients of the 'divine manuductions,' and gifted with power
'to diffuse healing to the afflicted; whether deaf, dumb, lame, halt, or
blind.' The Archbishop was therefore entreated to compose a form of
prayer to be used in all churches and chapels, that nothing might
prevent the inestimable power of the De Loutherbourgs from having its
free course, and to order public thanksgiving to be offered up for the
same. In her preface, Mrs. Pratt stated that her pamphlet had been
published without the consent of Mr. De Loutherbourg, and that he had
reprimanded her on account of it, and enjoined her positively to
suppress it; but that on mature reflection she had considered it more
advisable to offend an individual rather than permit thousands of her
fellow-creatures to remain strangers to the precious gifts of the
painter. 'I judged by my own private feelings,' she writes, 'that had I
any relative either deaf, dumb, blind, or lame, how thankful I should be
to find a cure (_more especially gratis_); therefore I suffered the
pamphlet to be sold, in hopes that by circulating these most solemn
truths, many poor afflicted people might come and be healed.'
The cures enumerated in Mrs. Pratt's list would be marvellous enough if
the slightest credit could be attached to the lady's wild statements. De
Loutherbourg's treatment of the patients who flocked to him was
undoubtedly founded on the practice of Mesmer, though Horace Walpole
appears to draw a distinction between the curative methods of the two
doctors, when he writes to the Countess of Ossory in July 1789:
'Loutherbourg the painter is turned an inspired physician, and has three
thousand patients. His sovereign panacea is barley water. I believe it
is as efficacious as mesmerism. Baron Swedenborg's disciples multiply
also. I am glad of it. The more religions and the more follies the
better: they inveigle proselytes from one another.' In a subsequent
letter he writes, in reference to a new religion advocated by Taylor
the Platonist:--'He will have no success. Not because nonsense is not
suited to making proselytes--witness the Methodists, Moravians, Baron
Swedenborg, and Loutherbourg the painter--but it should not be learned
nonsense, which only the literate think they understand after long
study. Absurdity announced only to the ear and easily retained by the
memory has other guess operation. Not that I have any objection to Mr.
Taylor for making proselytes: the more religions the better. If we had
but two in the island they would cut one another's throats for power.
When there is plenty of beliefs the professors only gain customers here
and there from rival shops, and make more controversies than converts.'
This letter was also written to the Countess of Ossory. It was hardly in
so free a vein on such a subject that the writer would have ventured to
address Miss Hannah More; with whom Mr. Walpole was fond of
corresponding about this period.
In Mrs. Pratt's List we read of a lad named Thomas Robinson, suffering
from the king's evil, and dismissed from St. Bartholomew's Hospital as
incurable, brought before Mr. De Loutherbourg, who 'administered to him
yesterday in the public healing-room, amidst a large concourse, among
whom were some of the first families of distinction in the kingdom,' and
wholly cured the sufferer. The two daughters born deaf and dumb of Mrs.
Hook, Stable Yard, St. James's, waited upon Mrs. De Loutherbourg, 'who
looked upon them with an eye of benignity and healed them.' 'I heard
them both speak,' avers Mrs. Pratt, by way of settling the matter. Among
other cures we find 'a man with a withered arm which was useless, cured
in a few minutes by Mr. De Loutherbourg in the public healing-room at
Hammersmith;' 'Mr. Williams, of Cranbourne Street, ill of a fever, had
kept his bed ten weeks, was cured instantly;' 'a gentleman, confined
with gout in his stomach, kept his bed, was cured instantly;' 'a
green-grocer in Weymouth Street, Marylebone, next door to the Weavers'
Arms, cured of lameness in both legs--went with crutches--is perfectly
well;' 'a Miss W----, a public vocal performer, cured,--but had not
goodness of heart enough to own the cure publicly;' 'a child cured of
blindness, at Mr. Marsden's, cheesemonger, in the borough.' Other cases
are set forth; but the reader will probably consider that specimens
enough have been culled from Mrs. Pratt's pamphlet.
That the proceedings of the De Loutherbourgs attracted extraordinary
attention is very certain. Crowds surrounded the painter's house at
Hammersmith, so that it was with difficulty he could go in or out.
Particular days were set apart and advertised in the newspapers as
'healing days,' and a portion of the house was given up as a
'healing-room.' Patients were admitted to the presence of the
artist-physician by tickets only, and to obtain possession of these, it
is said that three thousand people were to be seen waiting at one time.
Mrs. Pratt recounts 'with horror and detestation 'the wickedness of
certain speculators in the crowd, who, having procured tickets gratis,
unscrupulously sold them, at a profit ranging from two to five guineas,
to buyers who were tired of waiting. De Loutherbourg complained bitterly
that out of the thousands he professed to have cured, but few returned
to thank him for the great benefits he had conferred upon them. He
preferred to believe in the ingratitude of his patients rather than
adopt the more obvious and reasonable course of questioning the perfect
virtue of his curative powers, Mrs. Pratt, in concluding her pamphlet,
entreats the magistracy or governors of the police to wait on Mr. De
Loutherbourg and consult with him as to a proper mode of promoting his
labours, and suggests that a 'Bethesda' should be forthwith built for
the reception of the sick, and that officers should be appointed to
preserve decorum, and to facilitate the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. De
Loutherbourg, 'without so much crowding.' Finally she exhorts the world
at large to contribute generously to the promotion of these beneficial
objects.
But even at the date of Mrs. Pratt's pamphlet the tide was turning--had
turned. The nine days' wonder was over. The mania was dying of
exhaustion. Incidentally, the lady relates that 'having suffered all the
indignities and contumely that man could suffer,' the inspired physician
had for a time retired from practice into the country. 'I have heard,'
she continues, 'people curse him and threaten his life, instead of
returning him thanks.' In truth, as the public credulity waned, the
doctor's cures failed. His labours were of no avail; his prophecies were
falsified. His patients rose against him; the duped grew desperate; the
mob became exceeding wroth. The house in Hammersmith Terrace was
attacked; stones were thrown, and windows smashed. Not much further
mischief was done, however. De Loutherbourg and his wife prudently
withdrew from public observation--quitted the kingdom. They were next
heard of in company with their friend Count Cagliostro in Switzerland;
Madame Cagliostro having accompanied them in their journey from England.
But Count Cagliostro's career of jugglery and fraud was nearly over. On
the night of the 27th December 1789, he was arrested in Rome, and shut
up in the Castle of St. Angelo, whence he never emerged alive.
In the curious and scarce _Life and Adventures of Joseph Balsamo,
commonly called Count Cagliostro_, translated from the Italian, and
published in London in 1791, copies are given of certain strange papers
found in his possession, concerning which he was examined by the
Inquisition during his imprisonment. In one of these documents there is
unquestionable reference to De Loutherbourg, though the painter's name
is not given at length, and appears surrounded by the jargon of
Cagliostro's so-called system of Egyptian freemasonry, of which it is
not possible to render any satisfactory interpretation. We extract from
the paper the following:--
'_On the twentieth day of the eighth month_--
'The Grand Master being employed in his operations, after the usual
ceremonies, the Pupil, before seeing the angel, said, "I find
myself in a dark room.
'"I see a golden sword suspended over my head.
'"I perceive Louth--g arrive.
'"He opens his breast and shows a wound in his heart; he holds out
a poniard to me."
'_Grand Master_. "Is he employed in the service of the Grand
Cophte?"
'_Pupil_. "Yes."
'_G. M_. "What else do you see?"
'_P_. "I see a star.
'"I see two.
'"I see seven."
'_G. M_. "Proceed."
'_P_. "Louth--g has retired--the scene changes, I see seven
angels," etc. etc.
Cagliostro was ordered by the Inquisition to explain the meaning of this
paper. He professed the profoundest ignorance as to its purport. There
will probably be no great harm in concluding, therefore, that it did not
possess meaning of any kind. But the reader is left to form his own
opinion on the subject.
Soon De Loutherbourg was found to be again in England. But he practised
no more as an inspired physician; he now followed sedulously his
legitimate profession. His eccentricities and escapades were overlooked;
it seems to have been agreed that he had been more fool than
knave--that he had imposed upon himself quite as much as upon other
people.
A highly esteemed painter, he was permitted to resume his place in
society. In proof of the regard in which he was held, it may be noted
that the guardians of the De Quinceys deemed it worth while to pay De
Loutherbourg a premium of one thousand guineas, to receive as a pupil
William, the elder brother of Thomas De Quincey, who had given promise
of skill in drawing. The young fellow died, however, in his sixteenth
year, about 1795, in the painter's house at Hammersmith. A more moderate
sum had some years previously been demanded of Mr. Charles Bannister,
the actor, for the art-education of his son John. For a payment of fifty
pounds per annum for four years, it was agreed that John Bannister
should be taught, boarded, and lodged. But the arrangement came to
nothing. De Loutherbourg demanded the payment of the money in advance.
He mistrusted the players. They had caricatured him on the stage as 'Mr.
Lanternbug,' in General Bourgoyne's comedy, _The Maid of the Oaks_; and
then his mocking artist brethren caught at the nickname, corrupting it,
however, to 'Leatherbag.' Mr. Bannister was unable or unwilling to
comply with the painter's requirements: so young John was sent to the
school of the Royal Academy, which he soon deserted, and finally trod
the boards, and charmed the town as an actor. Another pupil of De
Loutherbourg, and a close imitator of his worst manner, who is yet
worthy of public notice as the founder of the Dulwich Gallery, was
Francis Bourgeois, knighted by the King of Poland. Edward Dayes, artist,
critic, and biographer of artists, is said to have exclaimed
eccentrically in reference to Sir Francis: 'Dietricy begat Casanova,
Casanova begat De Loutherbourg, De Loutherbourg begat Franky Bourgeois,
a dirty dog, who quarrelled with nature, and bedaubed her works!'
By his pictures of 'Lord Howe's Victory on the 1st of June 1794,' and
'The Storming of Valenciennes,' De Loutherbourg acquired great
popularity.[18] For Macklin's Bible (most luxurious of editions, in
seven folio volumes, published in seventy parts at one guinea each!) he
painted 'The Angel destroying the Assyrian Host,' and 'The Deluge;' the
latter a particularly spirited and effective performance. Dayes, his
contemporary, suggests, however, that he was made a historical painter
by the printsellers, rather than by the sufficiency of his own genius in
that respect. For the higher purposes of art, his composition was too
defective, his drawing not masterly enough, and his execution too small
and delicate. But Dayes greatly admired De Loutherbourg's 'Review of
Warley Camp,' in the Royal Collection; especially praising the animals
introduced, and the cool grey of the general effect; the painter as a
rule being prone to a somewhat coppery tone of colour.
[18] 'July 25th, 1798. Went with Geiseveiller to see the picture of the
"Siege of Valenciennes" by Loutherbourg. He went to the scene of action
accompanied by Gilray, a Scotchman, famous among the lovers of
caricature; a man of talents, however, and uncommonly apt at sketching a
hasty likeness. One of the merits of the picture is the portraits it
contains, English and Austrian. The Duke of York is the principal figure
as the supposed conqueror; and the Austrian general, who actually
directed the siege, is placed in a group, where, far from attracting
attention, he is but just seen. The picture has great merit; the
difference of costume, English and Austrian, Hulan, etc., is
picturesque. The horse drawing a cart in the foreground has that faulty
affected energy of the French school, which too often disgraces the
works of Loutherbourg. Another picture by the same artist, as a
companion to this, is the victory of Lord Howe on the first of June;
both were painted at the expense of Mechel, printseller at Basle, and of
V. and R. Green, purposely for prints to be engraved from them. For the
pictures they paid £500 each, besides the expenses of Gilray's journeys
to Valenciennes, Portsmouth, etc'--_Diary of_ THOMAS HOLCROFT.
In 1808, Turner, appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal
Academy, went to live at Hammersmith, in order, it has been suggested,
to be near De Loutherbourg, of whose works he was known to be an
admirer. That he should have aided in the art-training and forming of
the greatest of landscape painters is a real tribute to the merits of De
Loutherbourg. It is something to have been even the fuel that helped the
fire of a great genius to burn the more brightly.
The characteristics of the old scene-painter's art which attracted the
attention of Turner, were doubtless the boldness and strength of his
effects: his rolling clouds and tossing waters; his sudden
juxta-positions of light and shade; his bright and transparent, if
occasionally impure and unnatural, system of colour. He was of another
and inferior school to Richard Wilson, Gainsborough, and Constable, who,
differing widely in their points of view and in their methods of art,
are yet linked together by a common love of the natural aspects of the
objects they studied, and a preference for a tender and temperate over
what may be called a hectic and passionate rendering of landscape. But
succeeding or failing, De Loutherbourg certainly aimed at the
reproduction of certain pictorial _tours de force_ which they would
never have attempted. He was an innovator in the studio as on the stage.
According to modern modes of thought he was not, of course, a
conscientious worker. His landscapes were indeed begun, continued, and
completed in his painting-room. A few crude pencil lines upon a card
were enough for him to take home with him; for the rest he relied upon
his memory or his invention. But in such wise was the general method of
his time. Painters produced their representations of land and sea after
close toil by their firesides. There was not much taking of canvases
into the open air in the days of De Loutherbourg. Pursuing such a
system, he became, necessarily, very mannered; and yet, with other and
greater men, he helped to destroy a conventional manner in art. Rules
had been laid down restricting the artist to an extent that threatened
to oust nature altogether from painting. It had been decreed, for
instance, that in every landscape should appear a first, second, and
third light, and, at least, _one_ brown tree. Departure from such a
principle was, according to Sir George Beaumont and others, flat
heresy. De Loutherbourg avowed himself a heretic. And he ventured to
object to the old-established, well-known classically-composed
landscape, which was becoming an art nuisance. The thing has disappeared
now, but the reader has probably a dim acquaintance with the
classically-composed landscape. It was somewhat in this wise: in no
particular country, a temple of ruins on the right hand was balanced by
a trio of towering firs on the left. In the middle distance was raised
another temple in a more tenantable state of repair, above a river
crossed by a broken bridge, the ragged arches strongly reflected in the
water; at the back, in the centre of the horizontal line (gracefully
waved with lilac mountains), was the sun, rising or setting, it was
never quite certain which; whilst little ill-drawn, inch-high figures
straggled about in the foreground, and furnished a name to the picture:
Æneas and Dido, Venus and Adonis, Cephalus and Aurora, Apollo and
Daphne, etc. etc. De Loutherbourg's dashing sea-views and stormy
landscapes, although they might savour a little of the lamp and the
theatre, did service in hindering the further production of the
'classical compositions' of the last century.
De Loutherbourg died on the 11th March, 1812, at the house in
Hammersmith Terrace, which had been the scene of his exploits as an
inspired physician. He was buried in Chiswick churchyard, near the grave
of William Hogarth.