Nature and Art, September 1, 1806.] 
THE STORY OP A SCENE-PAINTER. 
101 
mercenary theatre.” Mr. Repys — most devoted of 
playgoers — notes occasionally of particular plays, 
that “ the machines are line and the paintings 
very pretty.” In October, 1667, lie 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 Mi'. 
Pepys’s 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 Dali, 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 Sandby, and 
one of the first Associates of the Academy, was 
scene-painter at the Hay market. 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 liaye 
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. ILe 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 land- 
scapes 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 pre- 
vented the English from becoming master’s 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 paid thitherto 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 re- 
markable 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 door's 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 considerably 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 Facilic, 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 de- 
cidedly an innovator and reformer. He was the 
first to use set-scenes, and to employ 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 trans- 
parent scenes, introducing effects of moonlight, 
sunshine, fire, volcanoes, Ac., 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 
