The Vale of Narni

The Vale of Narni
The Vale of Narni
The Vale of Narni
Private Collection, England / Photograph by John Hammond
title=Credit line
Artist
Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
Title
The Vale of Narni
Date
c.1760 (undated)
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Metric: 66 x 50.2 cm
Imperial: 26 x 19 1/2 in.
Collection
Private Collection, England
Accession Number
BB13
Wilson Online Reference
P102
Description
In the centre beneath a group of three stone pines a man and a woman are holding an animated conversation while next to them on the right two women and a child recline on the ground, surveying the river valley and distant mountains.
Exhibited
Brighton 1920 (39 - The Vale of Narni, near Rome); London 1925 (52 - Italian Scene); Manchester 1925 (26); Exeter 1946 (55); on loan to Kenwood, 1959-60; London 1968 (3); London, Cardiff and New Haven, 1982-83 (79); London, Tate Gallery, Manners & Morals, 1987-88 (212); Conwy 2009 (10); Weston 2011 (12); Tercentenary 2014 (72)
Provenance
Benjamin Booth by 1790; Marianne Booth, Lady Ford; thence by descent
Signature/inscription
Signed in monogram on a stone to the right: RW [R reversed]
Techniques and materials
The upright format is unusual. David Solkin has noted that such intricately detailed cabinet pictures, smoothly finished except for the occasional passage of controlled but accentuated impasto, fit most comfortably into the first few years after Wilson's return to England.
Subject
The actual Vale of Narni is about 40 miles north of Rome, in Umbria, almost at the geographic centre of Italy. Wilson passed through or near Narni on his way from Venice to Rome in late 1751 and he incorporated its famous broken bridge into several capriccios such as P66. However, the title was given to the present work many years later and the scene may have been invented by Wilson soon after his return to London.
Related Prints
E72/8 Thomas Hastings after Wilson, The Vale of Narni, The British Museum (1854,0708.65) and other impressions
Related Paintings
P66 Landscape Capriccio on the Via Aemilia, Private Collection, New York and other versions
Critical commentary
If intended as topographical the view may be along the River Nera valley to the east of Narni, towards the high Apennines in the distance. However, the title is an early nineteenth-century one, deriving from the inscription on Thomas Hastings's etching of 1821 (E72/8). The work was probably painted after Wilson's return to London in 1757 - Solkin has commented that it is more likely to be an invention of the artist intended to be evocative of classical Italy. Robin Simon noted how 'this remarkable painting anticipates later Romantic landscape art in that its true subject is not so much the location as simply and dramatically, a group of trees seen against the light (Wilson and Europe 2014, p. 260). Among the most poetic works of Wilson, P102 was the subject of verses by A.L. Rowse in Poems of Deliverance, 1946.
Bibliography
Booth Notes Doc. 9, p. 2 (34); Connoisseur, May 1920; Rutter 1923, p. 153; Rowse 1946; Bury 1947, pl. 9; WGC, pp. 26, 75, 89, 122-24, 206, pl. 90b; The Studio, February 1958; Howard 1969, p. 732, fig. 24; Hermann 1973, p. 60, pl. 58; Solkin 1982, p. 194 ; Walpole Society 1998-I, p. 15, pl. 17; Lord 2009, p. 52, no. 10; Williams 2011, p. 23, repr. & front cover; Wilson and Europe 2014, p. 260
Link to WG Constable Archive Record
Updated by Compiler
2021-01-19 00:00:00