Landscape with a Lake

A painter, draughtsman and etcher, Louis- Gabriel Moreau, called Moreau L’Ainé, to distinguish him from his brother, trained with the architectural painter Pierre-Antoine de Machy and exhibited for the first time in 1760 at the Exposition de la Jeunesse, showing views of ruins painted in gouache and watercolor over pencil, and employing a clear, bright palette. Unlike his younger brother, the book illustrator, Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune, who was named Dessinateur du Cabinet du Roi, Louis-Gabriel Moreau l’ainé was neither famous, nor received any academic recognition while he was alive. Although Moreau received full recognition as a major artist and was declared the most gifted gouache painter of the eighteenth century in the 1920s with the publication of a monograph and the mounting of an exhibition of his work (see G. Wildenstein, Un peintre de paysage au SVIIIe: Louis Moreau, Paris, 1923). He invented the taste from Pierre Antoine Demachy, for landscapes with monuments or houses. Moreau devoted himself to landscape painting, developing a unique identifiable handling of color and light that anticipates the Romanticism of Turner and the naturalism of Corot.
In 1764 he was received as a member of the Académie de St Luc, where he continued to exhibit landscapes with ruins and figures in various media until the Revolution (1789–95). In 1779 he exhibited in Montpellier, and it is possible that he traveled in the south of France, although most of his landscapes show subjects in Paris and its environs. In 1787 and 1788 he failed in attempts to become a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, but he was made painter to the Comte d’Artois (later Charles X) and had lodgings in the Louvre. He established a loyal following of private clients, including the Comte d’Artois, who acted as his principal patron. From 1791 he was able to exhibit at the open Salon at the Louvre, continuing to do so until 1804. In the years 1793–5 he also worked as a restorer and curator at the newly established Musée Nationale, Paris.