Richard Wilson, R.A.

Inscribed below: Villa Negroni, black chalk heightened with white on blue-grey laid paper, recto, with sketches of foliage, verso, inscribed in a later hand: by R. Wilson

17 x 20 cm.; 6 5/8 x 7 7/8 inches, framed size 36 x 39 cm.; 14 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches

Provenance

John Bulloch Souter (1890-1971), painter, sculptor and printmaker, born in Aberdeen, thence by descent;

By descent until 2025

Literature

Paul Spencer-Longhurst, with Kate Lowry and David Solkin, Richard Wilson Online: A Digital Catalogue Raisonné, 2014, no. D432 (recto) and D423 (verso)

This previously unrecorded drawing has been examined by Dr Paul Spencer-Longhurst and has been added to the online catalogue raisonné of the artist.

The drawing dates from c. 1753-1754 and is similar in format to another drawing of the same subject in the Stuart Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In the late 16th century Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590), while still a cardinal, bought a large estate and villa in the northern part of Rome. In 1696 it was sold to Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Negroni and became known as Villa Negroni. It was demolished in the 19th century.

Wilson was the leading British landscapist of his age who elevated landscape painting from topography into an important genre. He started out as a portrait painter but his formative years in Italy, from 1750 - 1757 during which he met contemporary artists such as Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) caused him to change.

He returned to London and set up a studio in fashionable Covent Garden. Wilson was a founder member of the Society of Artists in 1761 and the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 and exhibited in both places regularly. His final years saw his work fall from favour and, badly affected by heavy drinking, he retired to Wales.

John Bulloch Souter (1890 – 1972) the Scottish artist won the Burne Travelling Scholarship and as a student made a continental tour funded by the Scottish Education Department when he visited European collections and presumably developed a taste for Old Masters. He is best known for his Jazz Age paintings.