United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
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.
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.
She stated that, from Christmas 1788 to July 1789, De Loutherbourg and his wife had cured two thousand people, "having been made proper recipients to receive Divine manuductions; which heavenly and Divine influx, coming from the radix God, his Divine Majesty had most graciously bestowed upon them to diffuse healing to all, be they deaf, dumb, blind, lame, or halt."
De Loutherbourg excelled in his treatment of clouds; he secured in this way ample room and verge enough to display his knowledge and ingenuity.
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.
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.
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.
They do not like that which is essentially his. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his own, they do not care for.
Word Of The Day