inspired by classical Greek and Roman myths and pastoral idylls. Such landscapes were often completed
as panels for overdoors or overwindows, chimneybreasts or firescreens, as well as free
standing easel paintings, and were, along with other furnishings, expressive of a refined and genteel
classical erudition (Conisbee, 1981, 171–173). Decorative landscapes might also set a poetic mood or
introduce a note of drama, some murals consisting of architectural fantasies or trompel’oeil paintings
suggesting stage scenery to those parading through grand homes and mansions. One artist who carried out
such commissions for the French Crown was PierreSalomon Domenchin de Chavannes (1673–1744),
who completed some original, dramatic landscape paintings as well as more conventional Claude
inspired bucolic scenes. Boucher’s pastoral landscapes, alluding to classical ruins and tumbledown
cottages, and populated by highly improbable shepherds and shepherdesses, continued to be in demand
through to the end of his life in 1770. Their pretty pastel shades added to an air of fantasy and made them
commercially desirable as decorative pieces, especially as Boucher exhibited many of his landscapes at
the Salons (Brunel, 1986, 181). Hubert Robert, an artist specializing in picturesque paintings of ruins,
was among those who catered for Grand Tour clients who had visited Rome and wanted to capture the
experience for visitors to their homes. He also practiced as a landscape gardener, another way of gaining
earnings from a landscape specialism in this period. These decorative works had much in common with
the techniques of painted stage scenery and were appropriate to a society heavily invested in masquerade,
parade and selffashioning. The fashion for decorative rococo landscapes persisted through to the end of
the century in the work of JeanBaptiste Pillement (1728–1808), Fragonard and others.
In Britain, Italian painters were often sought out for decorative landscape commissions, as wealthy
British patrons became better acquainted with Italian art through the Grand Tour, the cultural journey
across Europe embracing Paris, Switzerland, Rome and Florence – and often, Venice and Naples. This
journey helped them to acquire social and cultural prestige and involved the purchase and shipping home
of substantial numbers of prints, drawings, paintings and sculptures, including works by the celebrated
Canaletto and his pupil Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780). Artists such as Francesco Zucarelli (1702–
1788), Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727–1785), who taught at the Saint Martin’s Lane
Academy, and Antonio Zucchi (1726–1795), Angelica Kauffman’s husband, worked with architects to
create appropriate landscape paintings and murals that ranged from arcadian rococo idylls, evocative
Claudean scenes, vedute and capriccios of classical ruins to (in Zucchi’s case) ornate but more austere
neoclassical mythological and allegorical scenes.
Landscape was viewed on occasion as a form of public entertainment or spectacle for a genteel,
discerning audience. Artists such as PhilippeJacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) combined work on
serious landscapes exhibited at the Salons with commissions for stage scenery and with performances
(e.g. at exhibition rooms in the Strand) of his own Eidophusikon, a small stage on which scenes from
battles, poetry and nature would be evoked through sound, lighting and moving pictures. Gainsborough
devised something similar, a showbox, which sought to avoid the lurid color effects of Loutherbourg’s
innovation while using landscape scenes painted on glass, backlit by candles, to provide more private
entertainment in the drawing room. This entertainment aspect of landscape painting continued into the
nineteenth century in the forms of the diorama and panorama.
The genre had a much more utilitarian application when it prioritized accurate topography. Artists such as
the brothers Thomas (1721–1798) and Paul Sandby straddled the divide between fine and applied arts.
As well as being founder members of the Royal Academy in London, they were both expert draughtsmen
involved in producing topographical studies for military, mapmaking or survey purposes, or for
privately commissioned landscape views. Thomas later became Professor of Architecture at the Royal
Academy in London. They contributed significantly to the development of watercolor techniques, and
stand as prominent examples of artists who could produce precise studies of specific locations as well as