Date
early 1770s (made)
Artist/maker
Richard Wilson, born 1713 - died 1782 (painter (artist))
Materials and Techniques
[oil painting] oil on canvas
Dimensions
[oil painting] Height: 24.5 in estimate, Width: 19.25 in estimate
Object history note
Painted by Richard Wilson RA (born in Pengoes, Wales, 1713 or 1714, died in Colemendy, Wales, 1782)
[oil painting] Purchased, 1876
Historical significance: Richard Wilson was a Welsh painter who had studied in Italy. Dutch landscape painting, particularly the work of Aelbert Cuyp, also influenced him. Wilson's patrons were the wealthy elite who sent their sons on the Grand Tour. He had begun as a portraitist, but in about 1752 gave up portrait painting in favour of landscapes. He continued to paint landscapes in the Italian manner even after he returned to Britain. Wilson was a founder member of the Royal Academy and enjoyed considerable success until the early 1770s. Although his career then went into decline, his treatment of landscape strongly influenced the next generation of artists, particularly J.M.W. Turner.
Note on Departmental file for 246-1876: "W.G. [William George] Constable [author of Richard Wilson, Routledge and Paul, 1953] expresses the verbal opinion that this picture is a late work painted in England."
W.G. Constable, Richard Wilson, Routledge and Paul, 1953, pl.128a. Note on p.231, "authentic".
Note on Departmental file for 246-1876: "[246-1876 was] seen by Mr Brinsley Ford [author of The Drawings of Richard Wilson, London, Faber and Faber, 1951] and Mr Douglas Cooper on 3/6/48. They had doubts about its authenticity. Mr Ford wondered if it was part of a larger composition which had been cut down."
The suggestion that this painting is part of a larger composition which had been cut down was later suggested by David H. Solkin in a letter dated 11 January 1977 addressed to Jonathan Mayne, Assistant Keeper of Paintings (on the Departmental file):
"... I have formulated certain hypotheses about the 'River and Castle: Evening [W.G. Constable, Richard Wilson, 1958, no. 128a]... I feel quite sure that this upright (a very rare format for Wilson) once formed the right half of a larger composition, of which the other side is now in the Ashmolean (entitled 'River with Musicians and a Ruin; W. G. Constable, Wilson, plate 105b [Ashmolean Museum Id no. WA 1962.17.30]). Though the heights of these two works do not correspond exactly, I think that this is because your painting has been cut down somewhat, most obviously at the top. In terms of style, the pictures match up precisely; though the uprights make for charming compositions, in view of Wilson's general practice, they would make much more sense if joined together. It is perhaps ironic that were these works to be united, they would form a superb variant of the 'River Mouth: Peasants Dancing' (Constable, 105a) that is also in the V&A [Museum no. 42-1880]...".
David H. Solkin published this hypothesis in his exhibition catalogue, Richard Wilson: The Landscape of Reaction, The Tate Gallery, 1982, cat. no. 139, pp.243-4, which concerns the Ashmolean painting. In this entry he noted that the Ashmolean painting "is only a fragment of a larger canvas, which was cut in two probably at some point during the early nineteenth century. The other piece now belongs to the Victoria & Albert Museum (repr. Constable, pl.128a) [Museum number 246-1878]. If these two works could be reunited, with the Oxford landscape to the left of the other, they would form a somewhat less than complete version (1) of a Wilson composition generally known as 'River Mouth with Peasants Dancing', examples of which belong to the V&A (2) [Museum number 42-1880] and to the Neue Pinakothek in Munich (fig.22). The Munich painting can probably be identified, on the basis of its size and its subject, with a work that Joseph Farington saw in Richard Entwistle's collection at Rousham in 1808; according to Farington, "The Scene represented (I understood) somewhat near Naples" (3). An unknown nineteenth-century writer later referred to the identical oil as a "Scene on the Coast of Baia" (4). The association of this landscape with the area just north of Naples makes a certain amount of sense, though Wilson's picture should probably be seen as a generalised evocation, and not as a precise topographical view. Baia was renowned in the eighteenth century for the profusion of its Roman remains. To quote from a contemporary guide-book, "This was one of the pleasantest places in the world, famous for its hot baths and palaces in the time of the romans, or which there is now only the miserable ruins... In fine, all the country about Pozzolo [i.e. Pozzuoli] and Baia, which was so beautifully laid out by the romans in groves and gardens, and covered with temples and palaces, has been so miserably torn to pieces by subterraneous fires and earthquakes, that the whole face of it is entirely changed, and it retains only the ruins of its antient splendor [sic], and a great magnificence in confusion" (5).
By the Imperial Age this region had become perhaps the most popular of all tourist resorts: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Pliny, Cicero, and Pompey, to mention only a few of the more celebrated names, all possessed Viallas here. In addition, the gulf of Pozzuoli on which Baiae is situated was also celebrated in Virgil's Aeneid, and provided the locale for Homer's Cimmerians. Hence we can understand why this section of the italian coast commanded so much attention from English Grand Toursits, and from their patrician counterparts at home. Baiae and its immediate environs provided Wilson with subjects for several of his paintings, few of which adhere very closely to actual appearances. The area was ideally suited to serve as a vehicle for one of his favourite themes: that combining roman glory in decay on the one hand, and Arcadian perfection on the other. As a typical example of the genre, the [now divided Oxford/V&A] 'Pastoral Scene' offered its viewers a symbolic refuge of rural simplicity, wherein they could contemplate the tragic example of a lost civilisation; at the same time, Wilson's classical image offered them the reassurance that order and culture might still be preserved, if man profited from the lessons of antiquity and adhered to its traditions. The 'River Mouth with Peasants Dancing' appears to have been one of the painter's last major articulations of a subject that had preoccupied him ever since he had visited Italy. All the known versions of this design [including V&A museum number 42-1880] display those distinct patches of colour lying loosely side by side, and those numerous accentuations in free strokes of rich impasto, which are so characteristic of his seventies' works. By this time, Wilson seems on the whole to have moved away from the finely-drawn and descriptive style of his previous decade towards a manner which suggests forms in more painterly, and less precise terms.
(1) The missing areas include a narrow vertical strip between the two fragments, as well as at least two and one-half inches of sky in the V&A piece.
(2) See Constable, pl.105a
(3) Farington, Diary, 15 December 1808, Grieg ed., v, p.107
(4) this reference, found in an interleaved copy of Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, is recorded by Constable, p.196.
(5) Nugent, Grand Tour, III, pp.406, 408
Descriptive line
Oil painting, Richard Wilson (1712/3-1782), Landscape, evening; river scene with castle.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Beaumont Fletcher, Richard Wilson R.A., London, Walter Scott Pub. Co; New York, Scribner, 1908. Reproduced facing page 176.
Labels and date
British Galleries:
Paintings of the Italian countryside became popular with British travellers who associated them with the classical history and myths of their Latin school texts. In about 1752 Richard Wilson, who was travelling in Italy, took advantage of this taste and gave up portrait painting in favour of landscapes. He continued to paint landscapes in the Italian manner even after he returned to Britain. [27/03/2003]
Materials
Oil paint; Canvas
Techniques
Oil painting
Categories
British Galleries; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
