Born in Strasbourg, Loutherbourg rose to the position of court painter to Louis XV and became a member of the Académie Royale before settling in London in 1771. In his choice of subject for this genre piece, Loutherbourg links the art of painting to the eighteenth-century English tradition of moralizing and satirical caricatures. In composing the landscape, however, he has clearly responded to French and Dutch painting. Frame: carved wood, gilded. Britain, first half 18th century, after a French model