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!"'
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.