Richard Wilson, R.A.

J. Ingamells, The Wallace collects ion Catalogue of Picture, vol. 1, British, German, Italian, Spanish, 1985, p. 254, n. 2;

D. Solkin, Art in Britain 1660-1815, New Haven and London 2015, pp. 212-13;

P. Spencer-Longhurst, Richard Wilson Online catalogue raisonné, cat. no. P56F.

The city is seen looking towards the south east from the slopes of Monte Mario above the Tiber with the Alban Hills in the distance, the setting sun bathing the the landscape in a soft, late afternoon light. The view from the Villa Madama is that from which pilgrims, travelling along the via Trionfale, first caught sight of the city of Rome.

Wilson was in Italy between 1750 and 1757 and is said to have become a landscape painter on the advice of Francesco Zuccarelli. As noted by Solkin (see lit.) he was the only British artist in this genre with direct experience of the fabled sites of Roman antiquity until the return of William Marlow from Europe in 1766.

A pent.mes nt in the foreground, to the right of the plinth, indicates that the artist reduced the size of the plinth during painting. The upright format is unusual in Wilson's ouevre. A related drawing is in a private collects ion in England (Spencer Longhurst, D225) and horizontal versions of this composition by Wilson are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven; and The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.