lescence, he went to London to study art and eventually
became a portrait painter of some note. In his mid-30s, he
departed the misty shores of Albion, joining the vanguard
of artists, aesthetes and Grand Tourists flocking to Italy.
He wound up staying seven years, becoming part of a
cosmopolitan group absorbed in the ancient glories and
indigenous delights of 18th-Century Rome.
It was during his extended Roman holiday that Wilson
developed a distinctively original approach to landscape
painting that reflected both the Neoclassicist ferment in
the Eternal City and the early stirrings of Romanticism
Richard Wilson, The Destruction of Niobe's Children, 1760, oil on canvas,
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
HYLAND
