Another, and more cogent, influence on Wilson was the
work of 17th-Century French painter Claude Lorrain, who
had lingered much of his adult life in Italy. Lorrain was
renown for imaginative canvases that allegorized classical
themes from the bible and mythology, presenting them
against a background of visually stunning, alluringly fictive
land- and seascapes
Inspired by Lorrain, Wilson also made paintings that en-
visioned ancient tales unspooling amidst Arcadian splen-
dors, but with a major difference. Unlike lesser artists who
turned out facilely rendered pieces considered merely dec-
orative "parlor pictures," Wilson eschewed using generic
landscape as if it were a theatrical backdrop.
"One area in which Wilson can really be called a pioneer,"
Richard Wilson's House of Pompey at Albano, mid 1750's
HYLAND
