Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros

Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe was one of three sons of Jeanne-Marie Bissat and Jean-Rodolphe Du Cros, a writing and drawing master ("maître d'écriture et de dessin") at Moudon[1][3] and later Yverdon College.

Ducros became friends with the Genevois painter Pierre-Louis De la Rive, with whom, between 1773 and 1776, he copied Dutch and Flemish paintings (by van Ruisdael, Philips Wouwermans, Nicolas Berghem, ...)[5] from the Tronchin collection[7] and realised watercolours in the Geneva countryside.

[8] Accompanied by the fellow Vaudois engraver Isaac-Jacob La Croix (CH, b. Payerne, 28 Dec.1751 - † after 1800), who had worked in the workshop of Christian von Mechel in Basel, he departed for the Italian Peninsula In the summer of 1776 [8] where he established himself in Rome, capital of the Papal States, at the end of that year.

That offered him the chance to be employed In March 1778 by two Dutch noblemen, Willem Carel Dierkens and Willem Hendrik van Nieuwerkerke,[9] to accompany them - later to be joined by Ten Hove and Nathaniel Thornbury - on a four-month voyage (from 10 April to 12 Aug.)[10] to Naples and its hinterland, the Mezzogiorno, the islands of Sicily and Malta where he created close to three hundred watercolours (held currently by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in 3 leather bound albums entitled "Voyage en Italie, en Sicile et à Malte - 1778"[11][12][13]).

[24] In 1782 Ducros also executed a large composition in wash together with Sablet: "Scène d'enterrement dans un cimetière" (Burial scene in a cemetery), in a landscape format, with numerous figures arranged in the manner of low-reliefs.

[28] But his primary commissioners were still English noblemen on a Grand Tour of Europe, for example Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Milord Frederick Hervey, the Earl of Bristol, and Lord Breadalbane.

Ducros, accused of being a Jacobin, was also expelled - in spite of the efforts to intervene on his behalf by Princess Sofia Albertina, the sister of the Swedish King Gustav III - on 12th[26] of February 1793, on direct orders of Cardinal Zelada, on a day's notice, with his belongings confiscated and his private collection looted;[32] forced to abandon his studio and his business and virtually ruined, he took refuge for a few months in mountainous Abruzzo, painting large watercolours of these still little-visited territories (e.g. surroundings of Licenza, Monte Velino, the Liri valley, the Roveto valley and Capistriello).

[10][34] He sold some of his works to the diplomat and geologist William Hamilton and some marines (seascapes) to Lord Acton, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Naples at the time, in charge of the reorganisation of the Neapolitan fleet of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, for whom Ducros produced a series of views of the shipyards of Castellamare di Stabia.

Financially strained by the bankruptcy of his Neapolitan banker, Ducros returned to Switzerland in the summer of 1807, first of all to Nyon, where his brother Rodolphe Du Cros was a pastor,[33] then to Lausanne, where he started to give private drawing lessons and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the government of the Canton of Vaud to set up an Academy of Painting.

Ducros is notable among water-colourists of his time for his large canvases, limited palette and forceful tones (achieved through application of gum) which allowed his paintings to be hung alongside oils at exhibitions.

[36] His landscapes are, for the most part, kept in the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne (after the State of Vaud had bought his entire studio contents in 1816)[3] and at the English estates of Stourhead and Bramall Hall.

Source:[8] Imbued with the harmonious vision of the world of the minor Swiss masters, Ducros at first produced transparent topographical watercolours, such as the "Dessins de mon voyage dans les Deux-Siciles et à Malte" (1778), and other works in which the distribution of trees and the drawing of foliage bear witness to the heritage of Claude Lorrain.

He owes most of his skills to the engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi: the use of dynamic imaging, the manipulation of landscape elements, the importance of scale, the use of large formats, all of which Ducros was able to integrate into his own vision without appropriating either the language or the theses of his illustrious predecessor.