The Murder

The Murder
The Murder
The Murder
Private Collection, England / Photograph by John Hammond
title=Credit line
Artist
Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
Title
The Murder
Date
1752 (undated)
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Metric: 43.2 x 53.3 cm
Imperial: 17 x 21 in.
Collection
Private Collection, England
Accession Number
BB28
Wilson Online Reference
P50A
Exhibited
Brighton 1920 (4 The Murder); Mold 1923; London 1925 (54 Meleager); Bangor 1925 (15 The Murder); Oxford 1937; London, Fine Art Society 1945, Masterpieces by British Landscape Painters of the 18th & 19th Centuries (30); Weston 2011 (24)
Provenance
Noel Desenfans [?]; Christie's 24 February 1798 (106 - A Landscape with a Storm); bt Phillips; Benjamin Booth (£27.16.6); the Revd R.S. Booth; Lady Ford; Richard Ford; Sr Francis Clare Ford; Captain Richard Ford; his sale, Christie's 19 June 1929 (14), bt P.M. Turner; Christie's 28 March 1947 (118), bt Brinsley Ford; private collection, England
Subject
The tension and drama of the killing in this painting reflected a common threat to Grand Tourists and others travelling in Italy and the scene represented would elicit an emotional response from many who had travelled abroad and been conscious of their own safety.
Related Drawings
D173 Study for the Murder, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
D322 Landscape with Banditti: The Murder, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
Related Prints
E72/32 Thomas Hastings after Wilson, The Murder, The British Museum and other impressions
Versions
See 'Links' tab
Related Paintings
P163 Meleager and Atalanta, Tate, London
Critical commentary
Similar in theme and various details to P50 (National Museum Wales, Cardiff) but with considerable differences in the landscape and probably datable to Wilson's last active years. Both versions were heavily influenced by the compositions, style and subject matter of the seventeenth-century Italian painter, Salvator Rosa, then a favourite artist for British patrons and collectors.
Bibliography
Booth Notes Doc. 1; Booth Notes Doc. 9 (22 - Storm of Lightning. Round Castle on a Rock. a Cataract - a Man lying murdered - a Woman by his Side begging her Life of the Assassin, 20 3/4 17); Ford May 1951, pp. 162-63, fig. 24; WGC, pp. 91, 158, pl. 14a; Walpole Society 1998-I, p. 17, BB29; Williams 2011, p. 34
Link to WG Constable Archive Record