'I love this work as much for the things I associate with it as for the picture itself. As a painting, it is spectacular and a little bonkers: the beauty of the Bay of Naples in the moonlight is almost enhanced by the erupting volcano, which would be a scene from a nightmare, but here is almost romanticised. You can imagine the Grand Tourists trying to get a piece of lava to take home and say “I was there”.
But it also makes me think of holidays, of beautiful Ischia and Capri – on a demanding day, I can go downstairs, look at it and dream about being in the south of Italy. It’s such a feast of the imagination, it opens so many different conversations: what people thought and saw at the time, the tourists who climbed Vesuvius to observe the activity of the volcano up front or their amazement at Pompeii and Herculaneum that were buried underneath the volcanic ash. For me, it’s redolent with story and myth and my own personal memories'
Charlotte Mullins comments on 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 contradistinction to the raging hot sea of liquid rock that snakes towards the towns in the foothills.
Charlotte Mullins is an art critic, writer and broadcaster. She used to edit Art Review and The V&A Magazine
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