Philip James De Loutherbourg, The Vision of the White Horse

Tate Britain, London

Date: 1798
Technique: Oil on canvas, 122.2 x 99.1 cm

In the last decade of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, the ensuing wars and the approaching millennium sparked a new trend for apocalyptic subjects. Artists explored themes of destruction and divine judgement and the end of mankind.Here Loutherbourg shows the first two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: the ‘conquerer’ on a white horse, drawing a bow, and ‘War’ on a red horse, wielding a sword. With ‘Famine’ and ‘Death’, they ride out after the breaking of the first four seals of the Book of Judgement. Loutherbourg made this design for an illustrated Bible.

Philip James De Loutherbourg, Visitor to a Moonlit Churchyard

Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Date: 1790
Technique: Oil on canvas, 863 x 685 mm

A figure stands in the overgrown ruins of an abbey, contemplating the remnants of an old painting showing the Resurrection. Above the figure of Christ a sundial throws a long moonlight shadow, suggesting the imminence of death and the possibility of Christian salvation. The ruin is identifiable as Tintern Abbey in the Wye Valley. This was one of the most-visited tourist sites of the late eighteenth-century, favoured because of its emotive historical associations with the Protestant Reformation.

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