Wilson, Richard
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
- Title
- Wilson, Richard
- Full Text of Entry
-
(1713 - 82), painter; b. Penegoes, Wales; to London 1729 and studied under T. Wright; exh. SA 1760 - 8: RA 1769 - 80; founder member of RA 1769; RA lib. 1776; retired to Wales 1781.
1750 - 6/7 Venice (Oct. 1750 - Jul. 1751 - ), Ravenna, Rimini, San Marino, Ancona, Loreto, Foligno, Rome (late 1751 - 7) with visit to Naples (Apr. - May 1753?)
When Wilson set out for Venice in the autumn of 1750 he was in his mid-thirties and had already some reputation as a portrait and view painter.1 In June 1751 he wrote that he had been in Venice 'abt 8 months'; he had studied Titian 'as much as ever I could' and was doing a portrait of the German Ambassador 'among other things'; he had also befriended 'Sigr Zuccarelli, a famous painter of this place', who, in return for his portrait by Wilson [now Tate Gall.], was to give him one of his own pictures. In the same letter Wilson said that 'Mr [Joseph] Smith (blessed be the name) our Consul here is exceedingly kind to me ... among other things he has got me the painting of Mr Sackville [Lord John Frederick Sackville?], which he is to send to my Lord Middlesex'.2 Wilson also painted William Lock (untraced) who, with Thomas Jenkins,3 accompanied him to Rome at the close of 1751. Wilson's drawings indicate their route lay along the coast to Loreto and then across to Rome through Foligno. Wilson was sharing rooms with Thomas Jenkins by the Piazza di Spagna ('verso Propaganda Fide') at Easter 1752 ('Sigre Cnis' and 'Sigre Wilzon' with 'Samuello Hon' [Samuel Hone]) and 1753 ('Ricardo Wilshon' and 'Tomaso Ginkins').4
Wilson quickly achieved success in Rome with his landscapes, to the extent that he finally renounced portraiture. The only portrait he painted in Rome appears to have been that of Thomas Hollis (1752; Harvard) who also commissioned a view of the Villa Madama. Joseph Vernet urged him to concentrate on landscape, and it was in exchange for one of Wilson's landscapes that Mengs painted his portrait in 1752 (NMW), declaring that 'he never met with but two English artists of superior genius, they were R. Wilson and Athenian Stuart'. Horace Mann, hearing of Wilson's success, recommended him in March 1752 to Cardinal Albani, who pledged his support.5 In August Wilson said the paintings he had then finished for Ralph Howard 'have recommended me so much to Cardinal Albani, that I have several bespoke to be done for him and other People of Rank'.6
Ralph Howard (later Viscount Wicklow) was a particularly generous patron. On 13 January 1752 (within weeks of his arrival in Rome) Wilson had signed a receipt for monies received from Howard 'on acct of 4 pictures that I am doing for him'.7 These he finished by August but retained to support his (unsuccessful) bid for election to the Accademia di S.Luca; in November he sent them with three others to James Russel for dispatch to Dublin, the principal items being two Landscapes with Banditti (almost certainly those now in the NMW), and the Regulus and Cincinnatus in the Brinsley Ford collection. Another Irish patron was Joseph Henry, who commissioned two companion pieces of Tivoli, both dated 1752 [NGI].
Lord Dartmouth, who was to be Wilson's second outstanding patron, arrived in Rome at the end of 1752. He bought two large Roman views, one dated 1753 (now YCBA and Tate Gallery), and a remarkable series of some 68 drawings, of which 25 are known;8 twenty are carefully composed studio productions of the environs of Rome, each dated 1754. These drawings contrast with the great freedom of Wilson's other Roman drawings, which range from studies of leaves and individual figures, to views and antiquities, and are principally contained in two sketchbooks, one (VAM) inscribed Studies & Designs by R. Wilson done at Rome ye year 1752 Caffe delle Inglesi, the other (YCBA) inscribed Studies by R. Wilson at Rome 1754. The first confirms a visit to Naples (Dartmouth was said to have taken Wilson there, i.e. April - May 1753) and the second has many subjects from the Campagna. It has been observed that Wilson's drawing technique changed at Rome, from black or red chalk on white paper (used up to 1753) to chalk and stump on grey paper, a technique practised at the French Academy at Rome.9
Evidence of Wilson's activity in his five or six remaining years at Rome is relatively sparse. Four of his Roman views were bought by Matthew Brettingham for Lord Leicester sometime before 1754. In 1754, according to a contemporary description, Wilson was sketching in Tivoli with 'the Earls of Pembroke Thanet and Essex and Ld Viscount Bolingbroke who dined and spent the day together on the Spot under a Large Tree'.(10) One of the two companion views of Rome painted for Stephen Beckingham (priv. colls.) is dated 1754. In February 1755 Thomas Brand (1717 - 70) in Rome told Lord Strafford that Wilson was 'in such repute as to be employed by many of the Italians & I think he is really the best painter of that sort I have seen abroad'.(11) Brand obtained for him Wilson's Ego fui in Arcadia (1755; priv. coll.).
Wilson acquired a number of pupils in Rome: Robert Crone and John Plimmer in 1755, the German A.F. Harper (in Rome 1752 - 6), and probably the Danes Johannes Wiedewelt and Johan Mandelberg (who arrived in Rome respectively in 1754 and 1755).(12) Jonathan Skelton said that Jenkins, Plimmer, Robert Crone and Richard Wilson 'were like one Person' in Rome.(13)
It is not clear when Wilson left Italy. Hayward said he left Rome in August 1756;14 there are two drawings (RA) of a smoking crater [Vesuvius?] dated 1756 and another, allegedly by Wilson and entitled The Roman Academy of 1757 with the artists and living model, was in the Davenport Bromley sale (14 May 1844). On 24 August 1757 Jenkins sent his compliments to Wilson through William Chambers in London,15 implying he had then returned home. Whenever it was he returned he was then in profit; 'he took from England eighty pounds, and brought back one hundred', Farington recorded in his Biographical Note.16
1. See Constable, Wilson, 21 - 36, and D. Sutton, Italian Sketchbook by Richard Wilson. 2. Constable, Wilson, 21 - 2 (8 Jun. 1751). D. Solkin, Wilson, exh. cat., Tate [1982], 177n.
3. Edwards, 258. 4. AVR sa, S.Lorenzo in Lucina. See also Constable, Wilson, 26. 5. See Sutton (at n1), 23 (Staatsarchiv, Vienna). 6. Sutton (at n1), 7 (28 August 1752). 7. See R.B. Ford, Burl.Mag., 93[1951]: 157 - 67. 8. See R.B. Ford, Burl.Mag., 90[1948]:337 - 45. 9. R.B. Ford, Drawings of Richard Wilson, 25. 10. Constable, Wilson, 34 - 5. 11. Add.22221, f.180 (28 Feb. 1755). 12. I.H. Nielsen, Burl.Mag., 121[1979]:439 - 43. 13. Skelton 1960, 47 (28 Jun. 1758). 14. Hayward List, 11. 15. 24 Aug. 1757; RA lib. 16. MS published in Richard Wilson, exh. cat., Hull [1936], 13.