Born in 1743 in Paris, Jules César Denis Van Loo was a highly appreciated great landscape painter, descended from a family of painters of Flemish origin, whose most prominent members were his uncle Jean-Baptiste and his father Charles-André. Also very attached to Italy, given the origins of his mother Maria Cristina Somis, he stayed for several years in Rome and Turin. Among the best-known works by Jules Van Loo are landscape depictions of the surroundings of Paris, portrayed with unfavorable weather conditions, such as "Night Storm" and "Stormy Landscape with Travelers near a Farmhouse," which earned him a place at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Later, he moved to Turin, where he worked at the Piedmontese court. Greatly influenced by Francesco Foschi's winter depictions, he specialized in snowy landscapes: the masterpiece "Snow Effects on the Ruins of a Gothic Church with a Bridge in the Distance," accepted and awarded by the Paris Salon, or "Snow Effects in an Alpine Landscape with Figures." In addition to these, several noteworthy depictions of the surroundings of Turin are characterized by realistic and spectacular colors: in "The Castle of Collegno with a Thunderstorm Effect," 18th-century classicism is found alongside a sensitivity that would later be typical of Romanticism, without forgetting the artist's characteristic attention to climatic phenomena. The interest in reality and the topography of places led him to depict "Surroundings of Turin with Aurora Effect," a clear and detailed view with the architectural structure of the bridge and contrasts of light and shadow that help create a sentimental and engaging atmosphere. Jules César Denis Van Loo died in his native city, Paris, in 1821, remembered not only as a landscape painter, which nevertheless remains his main characteristic.