River and Farmhouse -I (Italian River Scene with Figures)

River and Farmhouse -I (Italian River Scene with Figures)
River and Farmhouse -I (Italian River Scene with Figures)
River and Farmhouse -I (Italian River Scene with Figures)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
title=Credit line
Artist
Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
Title
River and Farmhouse -I (Italian River Scene with Figures)
Date
1751
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Metric: 43 x 53 cm
Imperial: 16 15/16 x 20 7/8 in.
Accession Number
501-1883
Wilson Online Reference
P35
Description
Two trees stand in the left foreground with three figures under them. In the centre on the far bank is a low building with a tall chimney; there are two boats in the water to the right. High ground is in the left distance but to the right the terrain is flat, with distant hills.
Exhibited
BI 1814 (166/170 - Landscape), lent Sir Richard C. Hoare; London, Royal Acadermy 1880 Old Masters (22 - A Landscape, lent Sir Henry Ainslie Hoare); London, Royal Academy, 1960 Italian Art and Britain (159); London, Cardiff and New Haven, 1982-83 (60); Tercentenary 2014 (54)
Provenance
Painted in Italy and presented to the artist's friend, Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-88); bt by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart, in Venice in the late 1780s after Zuccarelli's death; thence by descent; Christie's Stourhead Heirlooms sale, 2 June 1883 (12), bt Agnews for the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Signature/inscription
Unsigned; no inscription
Related Prints
E72/18 Thomas Hastings after Wilson, Italian Scenery, The British Museum (1854,0708.75) and other impressions
Versions
See 'Links' tab
Related Paintings
P37 Portrait of Francesco Zuccarelli, Tate, London
Critical commentary
Presumably painted in Venice before being given to his friend Zuccarelli, this is one of Wilson's first Italian landscapes. The style is an exercise in the Venetian Rococo, as practised by Zuccarelli and contemporary artists such as Giuseppe Zais (1709-1784). Wilson borrowed a number of stock motifs from their works, such as tattered peasants and the humble, sloping cottage - plus a loose method of composition which relies on a series of broadly looping curves. This style, however, did not long outlast his departure from Venice in late 1751 and compositional hints of a later, more characteristic approach are already present in the form of the fence and framing tree at the left and the prominent rock in the right foreground.
Bibliography
Edwards 1808, p. 78; Catalogue 1814, p. 20; Hazlitt 1843-44, vol. 1, p. 112 & p. li, no. 131; E.K. Waterhouse, 'A Richard Wilson Landscape painted in Italy', Burlington Magazine, vol. 91, Aug. 1949, pp. 230-31; WGC, pp. 24, 70, 78, 215-16, pl. 103a; Woodbridge 1970; Summary Catalogue of British Paintings, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1973, p. 151; Herrmann 1973, p. 52, pl. 44B; Solkin 1982, p. 178; Wilson and Europe 2014, pp. 244-45
Link to WG Constable Archive Record
Condition/Conservation
Glue relined; label on stretcher reverse records glue-lining in 1883 and surface sponging in 1894. Original canvas turnovers removed at time of relining. Stretcher probably not original as there are wider members than the stretcher. Bar cracks present on painting face at top and side margins. Grey ground or under painting visible between branches and around foliage. There is an unresolved, smudgy red object in the centre below the mill which might have been a figure in a boat. The reddish tree at far left may have been strengthened or introduced later. The paint in the sky is thick in places, perhaps indicating something else underneath. In raking light, there is severe wrinkling throughout the sky and flattening of impasto resulting from lining is visible. No further information revealed under UV apart from minor retouches to branches and along old cracks in paint.