Lord Howe's action, or the Glorious First of June

Philip James de Loutherbourg painted Lord Howe's Action, or the Glorious First of June around 1795, depicting the naval battle of June 1, 1794, in which the British fleet under Admiral Lord Howe defeated the French Revolutionary Navy in the Atlantic. De Loutherbourg's theatrical background gave him the ability to organize the complex spectacle of a naval battle — the smoke, the damaged ships, the heaving sea — into a compositional drama that communicated both the scale of the engagement and its emotional intensity. His naval battle paintings were among his most important commissions and establish him as the leading painter of British naval supremacy in the revolutionary wars period, alongside the marine painter Nicholas Pocock.

The canvas captures the chaos and smoke of naval combat with dramatic lighting breaking through cannon fire. De Loutherbourg combines topographical accuracy of ship formations with the theatrical effects he had mastered as a stage designer.