Coalbrookdale by Night
{{Short description|1801 painting by Philip James de Loutherbourg}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}}
{{Use British English|date=March 2018}}
{{Infobox artwork
| image_file=Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg d. J. 002.jpg
| image_size=400px
| title=Coalbrookdale by Night
| artist=Philip James de Loutherbourg
| year=1801
| type=Oil painting
| height_metric=68
| width_metric=107
| museum=Science Museum
| city=London
}}
Coalbrookdale by Night is an oil painting by Philip James de Loutherbourg, from 1801. It is held at the Science Museum, in London.{{cite web| url=http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/5/316.full | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110430125444/http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/5/316.full | url-status=dead | archive-date=30 April 2011 | title=Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale at Night (1801) | work=Occupational Medicine | publisher=Oxford Journals | accessdate=2 December 2015 }}
History and description
The painting depicts the Madeley Wood (or Bedlam) Furnaces, which belonged to the Coalbrookdale Company from 1776 to 1796. The picture has come to symbolize the birth of the Industrial Revolution in the Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire, England.{{cite web| url=http://www.netnicholls.com/neh2001/pages/aspects2/23frame.htm | title= The Early Revolution: Coalbrookdale by Night | series=Images of the Industrial Revolution in Britain | work=netnicholls.com | accessdate=2 December 2015 }}
Loutherbourg undertook tours of England and Wales during 1786 and 1800, observing industrial activity at the time.{{cite web| url=https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/coalbrookdale-by-night-179866 | title=Coalbrookdale by Night by Philip James de Loutherbourg | work=Art UK | location=UK | accessdate=2 December 2015 }} Coalbrookdale by Night provides a view of the Bedlam Furnaces in Madeley Dale, downstream along the River Severn from the town of Ironbridge itself.
Professor Brian Lukacher dubbed the picture as "the best known example" of the industrial sublime, a minor genre in romantic picture that specialized in representing industrial settings. In his words, the picture is "at once a celebration of the energy unleashed by a coke-fired blast furnace and an early reckoning with its environmental consequences".{{cite book |last1=Eisenman |first1=Stephen |last2=Crow |first2=Thomas E. |last3=Luckacher |first3=Brian |last4=Nochlin |first4=Linda |last5=Phillips |first5=David L. |last6=Pohl |first6=Frances K. |title=Nineteenth-century art: a critical history |date=2020 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |location=London |isbn=9780500294895 |page=136 |edition=Fifth}}
References
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{{Philip James de Loutherbourg}}
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Category:Collection of the Science Museum, London
Category:Industrial Revolution