Oil painting, Richard Wilson (style of), 'Landscape with River and Ruins'

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons, 1870
John Meeson Parsons (1798-1870), art collector, was born in Newport, Shropshire. He later settled in London, and became a member of the stock exchange. His interest in railways led to his election as an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1839, and he was director or chairman of two railway companies between 1843 and 1848. Much of his time however was spent collecting pictures and works of art. In his will he offered his collection of mostly German and Dutch schools to the National Gallery (which selected only three works) and to the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington, later the Victoria and Albert Museum. The South Kensington Museum acquired ninety-two oil paintings and forty-seven watercolours. A number of engravings were also left to the British Museum.

Historical significance: When this painting was bequeathed to the Museum in 1870 by John Meeson Parsons (1798-1870) it was thought to be an autograph work by Richard Wilson. However, from the 1940s the V&A holdings of Richard Wilson's oil paintings came under close scrutiny. In 1948 it was viewed by Brinsley Ford and Douglas Cooper in company with V&A curator Graham Reynolds, who all agreed that it was an imitation of Wilson. In 1953 W. G. Constable in his definitive list of works by Wilson, Richard Wilson, noted it was "not by Wilson". In Wilson's own day there was a ready market for idealised Italianate landscapes. Later, it was works attributed to Wilson himself that appealed to collectors, creating a further market for works that imitated his idealised style, even if they were not direct copies of known compositions by Wilson. This seems to be one such exercise, with many of the elements associated with Wilson without following a known prototype; ruin, bucolic figures, distant view of hills and villa or castle seen across a calm lake. It is a pleasant fantasy which the Italians would have called a 'capriccio'.

Note on Departmental file for 494-1870, regarding viewing of the painting by Mr Brinsley Ford [author of The Drawings of Richard Wilson, London, Faber and Faber, 1951] and Mr Douglas Cooper on 3/6/48. "Mr. Brinsley Ford and Mr. Douglas Cooper saw with me [Graham Reynolds] on 3/6/48. We all thought it was an imitation of Wilson."

W.G. Constable, Richard Wilson, Routledge and Paul, 1953, p.105 "not by Wilson".

See Richard Wilson and his Circle, The Tate Gallery, 1949 [Organized by the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham]. Although this exhibition did not include examples from the V&A, it set Wilson's then recognised paintings alongside works by pupils of Wilson, as well as variants and copies of his work - thereby illuminating how influential and also how collectable Wilson's work was in the years after his death. In the 'Introduction' Mary Woodall (Keeper of the Department of Art, city Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham] wrote, "... his pictures were.. much copied by his pupils and by others with less scrupulous motives...". Woodhall commented further, "Within a few years of his death Wilson's work was confused with that of his pupils, so that Farington, when he visited the Booth collection in 1807*, pointed out that one picture was by Hodges; [Farington] also remarked that some of the pictures attributed to Wilson in the exhibition at the British Institution in 1814 were not by the master." Woodhall also noted however that "... [Wilson] himself often made uninspired replicas of his original designs", highlighting the difficulty in attributing works by Wilson.

[*Benjamin Booth (1732-1807), was a great admirer of Wilson's work and bought many of his pictures. Joseph Farington, R.A. (1747-1821) was a pupil of Richard Wilson, whose studio he entered in 1763.]

494-1870