An Italian landscape with figures

Charles François Lacroix was born in Marseilles, and little is known of his early training except that he was a pupil of the celebrated marine and landscape painter Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), in whose studio in Rome he served as an assistant in the 1740s. While his two earliest known works, pendant seascapes, are signed and dated 1743, there is no documentary evidence concerning him until 1754, when he registered as living in Rome. He was in Naples by 1757, where he painted the local countryside and first came into contact with Mount Vesuvius, which he would often depict throughout the rest of his career. By 1776, he was back in Paris and exhibited at the Salon du Colisee. In 1780-82, he is known to have participated in the Salon de la Correspondance, the only regular alternative public exhibition to the Salons of the official Academy, of which he was never a member.
While living in Rome, Lacroix imitated, and sometimes copied, the seascapes of Adrien Manglard and Vernet, while his mature manner maintained a sense of fantasy that is largely absent from their works. Known as ‘Della Croce’ in Rome, Lacroix achieved considerable commercial success, as attested to by his large output and by the numerous engravings made after his paintings.
The present painting is among the artist’s earliest signed and dated works, executed in Rome in 1745, while he was still working in the studio of Vernet, and it is strongly influenced by the master’s style. Excellently preserved, it depicts an imaginary, picturesque view of the Roman countryside that is clearly inspired by the landscape in the immediate environs of Tivoli.