Louis Gabriel Moreau

Watermark: none visible through lining.
Louis Gabriel Moreau, called Moreau the Elder, to distinguish him from his younger brother, the book illustrator Jean-Michel Moreau, devoted himself to landscape painting although it was not highly regarded in his time. As a consequence, the elder Moreau was never formally received into the Academy and could not exhibit his work in the Salon until the 1790s, when access became unrestricted. Moreau's talents as a landscape artist were brought to light in the 1920s with Georges Wildenstein's publication of a monograph on the artist. He was a master at painting with gouache, which has the look of paint but without its flexibility.
Moreau's choice of materials were critical to his naturalistic, appealing results. Here he chose a very thin paper which he prepared with a layer of blue gouache before adding the general outlines of the composition. He simultaneously brushed the surface with a soft, broad brush to achieve atmospheric effects. To finish, he supplied accents of color, notably in the small group of figures accompanying a herd of sheep and goats in the foreground. Since Moreau apparently never left the Ile-de-France, most of his landscapes must have been based on views around Paris enriched by his awareness of the work of Italian landscapists. Given the difficulty of working in gouache, which dries quickly, there is little doubt that the bulk of his work was composed in the studio.