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.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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