Geraldine Collinge, the director of Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire, selects Pierre-Jacques Volaire's An Eruption of Vesuvius by Moonlight. In 1769, Pierre-Jacques Volaire moved from Rome to Naples. He had been born into a family of painters in Toulon, southern France, but had travelled to Italy to cash in on the lucrative British tourist market.
He sold picturesque landscapes and seascapes to aristocrats on the Grand Tour, who wanted to fill their country houses with souvenirs. Rome was at the epicentre of the Grand Tour, but Naples had one thing Rome didn’t — Mount Vesuvius. The volcano had buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in up to 60ft of ash in 79AD.
These seaside resorts were beginning to be excavated in the 18th century, yet the volcano remained an active, threatening presence nearby. Following a spectacular eruption in 1771, which Volaire witnessed first hand, he completed 30 different paintings of Vesuvius. This one is more than 8ft wide and feels cinematic in scale, engulfing the viewer.
We feel as small as the observers on the foreground rocks, who gaze at the sea of lava below. Volaire’s speciality was night scenes in which figures were silhouetted against a moonlit sky or open fire. In An Eruption of Vesuvius by Moonlight , he painted both.
A fiery fissure in the side of the volcano lets out a cloud of hot gas, which Volaire contrasts with the cool tones of the moonlit sky and sea beyond. The Bay of Naples is still and calm in con.