deputy director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in
British Art in London. Organizing the exhibition, designed
to show Wilson in the context of his time and underscore
his importance in the fine-art firmament, is Scott Wilcox, the
Yale Centre's chief curator of art collections. The Centre,
housing world's largest assemblage of British art outside
the United Kingdom, was founded in 1966 by Paul Mellon,
a member of the Yale class of '29. That's Mellon as in Mellon
Bank, one of several sources of his immense wealth.
Wilson, too, was born into relatively comfortable circum-
stances, albeit on a far less lofty scale, in Penegoes, Wales,
in 1714, the son of a prominent clergyman. Still in his ado-
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaen Sybil,
1814–15, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
HYLAND
