This monograph was part of the English Master Painters series, edited by Herbert Read and remains a seminal reference work. In 1953 it was the sheet anchor that Wilson studies had been lacking - summarising, assessing and adding copious new research to the published knowledge of the artist and his followers. Constable (appropriately a distant relation of the landscapist John Constable) modestly described his magisterial publication as 'a collection of material relating to Wilson rather than a book about Wilson' (p. 7).
He himself was the first Director of the newly formed Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London from 1932 to 1937. In 1935 he also became Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge but in 1937 resigned both positions and the following year left England to become Curator of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He remained in the United States until his death in 1976.
