A View near Tivoli at Dawn

This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1777. It was sent for exhibition from Rome.

Delane worked in the classical manner of Claude Lorrain and many of his pictures were sold in London as Claude originals. This landscape idiom had been popularised by the Welsh-born painter Richard Wilson and Delane found many aristocratic clients in Rome who had developed a taste for such pictures.

The painting of night scenes was popular amongst the immigre artistic community at Rome: Jacob More painted several, Joseph Wright, who painted numerous night scenes, and the Frenchman Volaire, who painted volcanoes by night. In these pictures, much approved by Goethe, and dating from the 1770’s and 1780’s, we may trace the onset and development of the Romantic movement.

Delane had already visited the subject matter of Tivoli earlier in his stay in Rome, and had executed a set of four large canvases for Lord Charles Hope in 1763. We know that he was painting the subject again in the late 1770’s.