Moonlight painting of this type suddenly became fashionable all over Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. The inspiration for this was probably the moonlight scenes of the Dutch seventeenth painter, Aert van der Neer whose works were avidly collected. In France the leading painter was Claude-Joseph Vernet who often painted moonlit seascapes. Nocturnal scenes of Italian landscapes also became popular – one of the leading exponents of this type was Joseph Wright of Derby. Although Van Loo’s moonlight here belongs to the standard tradition, it is painted with great sensitivity to the tonal values of moonlight.

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