Lake Scene by Moonlight

Lake Scene by Moonlight
Lake Scene by Moonlight
Lake Scene by Moonlight
Private Collection, England / Photograph by John Hammond
title=Credit line
Artist
Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
Title
Lake Scene by Moonlight
Date
c.1752-56 (undated)
Medium
Black chalk, heightened with white on greenish-grey paper
Dimensions
Metric: 370 x 267 mm
Imperial: 10 1/2 x 14 9/16 in.
Collection
Private Collection, England
Accession Number
BB47
Wilson Online Reference
D208
Description
By the light of the full moon, two boatmen stand beside a rocky arch and outcrop. On the distant shore beyond a river or lake are seen a windmill, a house and some trees and bushes. In the centre of the composition four birds fly upwards and towards the right, silhouetted against the glistening sky.
Exhibited
Exeter 1946 (13 - River Scene by Moonlight); Paris 1953 (90); Gainsborough's House 2014 (unnumbered)
Provenance
Benjamin Booth; the Revd R.S.Booth; Elizabeth Booth and Marianne Booth (later Lady Ford); thence by descent
Signature/inscription
Unsigned; no inscription
Verso inscriptions
[1] Inscribed: Marianne Ford
[3] Inscribed in Marianne Ford's hand: Wilson
Critical commentary
The composition recalls seventeenth-century Dutch moonlight scenes by Aert van der Neer (?1603/4-1677) and others, probably known to Wilson from his apprentice years in London. Such nocturnes were later to become the stock-in-trade of British Romantic artists including Turner and Joseph Wright of Derby, who was also much influenced by Wilson's Italian landscapes.
Bibliography
Walpole Society 1998-I, p.20, BB47
Updated by Compiler
2018-11-21 00:00:00