The Environs of Turin at Dawn

Jules-César-Denis van Loo worked out his kind of landscape in Rome, in contact with the French and German painters gathered there, among them Jean-Joseph Bidauld, Louis Gauffier and Jacob Philipp Hackert. There he arrived at a landscape built on classical lines yet taken almost directly from real places. He carried that approach to Turin, where he worked for the Savoy court until 1797, and turned it on the country around the city. This view of the outskirts of Turin at sunrise dates from 1794, one of the last of the series of light effects he painted there. It hangs in Sala 52 with his storm over the castle of Collegno and his dawn near Venaria, three canvases of exactly the same size, 83 by 120 centimetres.