Occupational Medicine 2008 58(5):316-317; doi:10.1093/occmed/kqn057
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Occupational Medicine. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale at Night (1801)
Oil on canvas, 68 x 106.5 cm. Science Museum, London.
Mike McKiernan
Fire is the dominant theme in this oil painting of Madeley Wood Furnaces, one of Coalbrookdale's ironworks [1]. The foundry is shown at night (the moon can just be seen peeping out at the right margin), silhouetted against the fiery glow of a furnace, which is being tapped. A wagon and horses are being lead away from the site through the detritus of industrial production. A dog trots alongside and a woman and her son are watching their progress.
‘Fire landscapes’ [2] was a term used by Count Nicola Maffei for a group of 20 Flemish paintings acquired by Isabella d'Este from Matteo del Nassaro, the Veronese gem-engraver in 1535. They had their roots in the grotesque images of Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450–1516) [3] and were used as devotional images for the contemplation of hell and damnation in Antonite hospitals, where syphilis and other inflammatory conditions were treated [4]. De Louthebourg's adoption of this format seems very apposite as the Madeley Wood foundry was also known as Bedlam. The painter presents the iron foundry as a vision of Hell but he encapsulates the complexities of the prevailing attitude toward industry in England at the time and sets the industrial scene in a sublime landscape [5]. The painting, which has a theatre stageset quality (see below), is both a celebration and a warning. The smoke from the chimneys is not only a symbol of economic productivity and wealth but also a noxious indicator of industrial pollution. Coalbrookdale, possibly the world's first coke-fired blast furnace, was then a site of considerable controversy. The renowned agriculturist Arthur Young described the surrounding countryside as ‘too beautiful to be much in union with the variety of horrors spread at the bottom; the noises of forges, mill, with their vast machinery, the flames bursting from the furnaces with the burning of coal and the smoke of the lime kilns’ [6]. The broken workpieces scattered through the foreground are reminiscent of the shattered fallen idols portrayed in earlier religious works [7] and further evidence of the spiritual context in which society viewed the value of work. The picture, not surprisingly, has become an iconic symbol of the Industrial Revolution in England. The development of coke smelting in this area of Shropshire by Abraham Darby and his family in the 18th century transformed the production of iron and Coalbrookdale's unique combination of natural resources enabled it to manufacture Britain's first iron rails, iron bridge, iron boat and steam locomotive. A Coalbrookdale blast furnace dating from 1658 can still be seen today at The Ironbridge Gorge Museum [8].
De Loutherbourg was born in Strasbourg in 1740 and died in London in 1812. At the age of 26 (below the age required by the law of the institution), he was elected to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris and nominated as a Peintre du Roi. Subsequently, he spent the greater part of his life in London where he was naturalized. In 1771, he was employed by David Garrick, England's most celebrated actor–manager to superintend scene painting at Drury Lane Theatre [9] and he exerted a considerable influence on the development of scenery for the English stage [10]. He was also commissioned to paint a number of large naval pictures [11] for Greenwich Hospital Gallery.
| |
© Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library.
|
|
 |
References
|
|---|
- Baugh C. Loutherbourg, Philippe Jacques de (1740 –1812) (2004) Oxford: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- Brown BL. From hell to paradise: landscape and figures in early sixteenth-century Venice, Renaissance Venice and the North: crosscurrents in the time of Dürer, Bellini and Titian (1999) London: Thames Hudson. 426.
- Seven Deadly Sins (Prado, Madrid) and The Temptation of St. Anthony. Lisbon: Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga.
- Nancy Corwin, Fire Landscapes, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1976.
- Schummer J, Spector TI. The visual image of chemistry: perspectives from the history of art and science. Int J Phil Chem (2000) 13:3–41.
- Briggs A. Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace: impact and images of the industrial revolution (1979) London: Thames and Hudson. 13.
- Altdorfer. Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1510), Staatliche Museen, Berlin and Flight into Egypt (1515) (2003) Los Angeles: Paul Getty Museum. 106–113. London: National Gallery. See Zuffi S. Gospel Figures in Art.
- Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Coach Road, Coalbrookdale, Telford, TF8 7DQ.
- Baugh C. Garrick and Loutherbourg (1990) Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey.
- Wilson E. Living Theatre: A History (2004) Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
- Battle of the First of June,1794 (1795). Oil on canvas. 26.7 x 37.4 cm, National Maritime Museum, London.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
Top
References