Grove and sunlit Landscape

Grove and sunlit Landscape
Grove and sunlit Landscape
Grove and sunlit Landscape
Private Collection, England / Photograph by John Hammond
title=Credit line
Artist
Ascribed to Wilson
Title
Grove and sunlit Landscape
Date
c.1770
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Metric: 31 x 42 cm
Imperial: 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 in.
Collection
Private Collection, England
Accession Number
BB27
Wilson Online Reference
P169
Description
To the left, buildings are seen through trees, with more buildings on a hill in the distance. To the right a man is riding a horse through a dark avenue.
Exhibited
Grosvenor Gallery 1888 (338 - Sunlit Plain 13 x 16 in., lent Sir Clare F. Ford); Brighton 1920 (7 - Landscape); Exeter 1946 (70 Landscape)
Provenance
Benjamin Booth; Revd. R.S. Booth, thence by descent
Signature/inscription
Unsigned, no inscription
Verso inscriptions
[1] In centre of upper horizontal stretcher bar an indecipherable red wax seal
[2] In centre of lower horizontal stretcher bar an indecipherable red wax sea.l
Related Prints
E72/19 Thomas Hastings after Wilson, Untitled (Grove and sunlit Landscape), The British Museum (1854,0708.76) and other impressions
Critical commentary
Despite the Booth provenance and the Hastings etching this seems a doubtful picture. The background and sky are more convincing as being by Wilson than the foreground, trees and avenue. There the facture seems untypically minute and clumsily managed. In the upper centre of the tree at the centre left are patches of undifferentiated green and there are more all down the right side of the right-hand tree. In contrast to these generalised trees the buildings in the distance are more differentiated.
Bibliography
Booth Notes, Doc. 9 (*11); Hastings 1825; WGC, pp. 94, 124, 200, pl. 80a; Walpole Society 1998-I p. 17, BB27
Condition/Conservation
Relined