Richard Wilson should be considered the virtual founder of the British landscape school.  He and Thomas Gainsborough are considered the two great British landscape artists of the 18th century. Our beautiful landscape, wholly characteristic of Wilson's work of the 1760's, portrays an idealized Italianate landscape, incorporating elements of Claude Lorrain and other great Italian landscapists to whose legacy Wilson became heir during his long stay in Italy.

Born in Wales the son of a clergyman, Wilson received a sound education in the classics. After serving an apprenticeship in London in the shop of Thomas Wright, he began his career as a portrait painter.(1)  Wilson's reputation flourished to the point that he numbered among the artists who joined Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, and others in founding the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768.

Yet Wilson found his vocation as a landscape artist during an extended visit to Italy (1750-1758). Indeed, he can be considered the virtual founder of a native British landscape school. While in Italy, Wilson devoted himself to the painting of idealized landscapes with imaginary classical ruins, bathed in poetry, in the manner of Claude Lorrain. and Nicolas Poussin. Our painting, with its bucolic foreground depicting cattle watering, and its impressionistic ruins in the middle ground, would seem to belong to this period.

Although Italian landscapes were hugely in vogue, Wilson and Gainsborough, among others, could not earn a living painting them, as they themselves were not Italian. Thus upon returning home, Wilson continued to paint Italianate landscapes, but used the scenery of England and Wales and fine views of country homes, for which he received many commissions, as the subjects of his paintings.

Note the close similarities of our painting to many of Wilson's works such as View on Hounslow Heath ca. 1765 (Tate Gallery, London), with its classical allusions and hazy glow;(2) View in Windsor Great Park, ca. 1765, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. (3) and Tivoli, The Cascatelle and the 'Villa of Maecenas', presumably a view of the Roman campagna.(4)

In 1982, the Tate Gallery in London conducted a major retrospective of Wilson's work. The catalogue to that exhibition (5) is an excellent source of bibliographical and visual information on Wilson's work.
                                          

(1)  Trapp, Frank Anderson, The Grand Tradition: British Art from Amherst College, © 1988 by The American Federation of Arts, New York, p. 19, Portrait of Vice-Admiral John Amherst, 1749, illustrated.

(2)  Meyer, Laure, Masters of English Landscape, © Finest S.A./Editions Pierre Terrail, Paris, 1993, illustrated pp. 54-55.

(3)   The Art Book, © 1999 Phaidon Press Ltd., 1999, illustrated p. 494.

(4)  Dejardin, Shawe-Taylor and Waterfield, Rembrandt to Gainsborough: Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery, © 1999 The American Federation of the Arts, Plate 85.

(5)  Catalogue of the Wilson Exhibition, Tate Gallery, London, 1982.