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    The White Monk - I

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    The White Monk - I
    The White Monk - I
    The White Monk - I
    Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio). Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey. Photographed by Photography Incorporated, Toledo
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    Artist
    Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
    Title
    The White Monk - I
    Date
    c.1760-62 (undated)
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    Metric: 66 x 80 cm
    Imperial: 26 x 31 1/2 in.
    Collection
    Toledo Museum of Art. To license image, click here.
    Accession Number
    1958.38
    Wilson Online Reference
    P144
    Description
    In the foreground two lovers are seated on the grass under a parasol. On the left is a prominent boulder, against which rests a stick. There are two large trees and a prominent sapling on the right and in the left middle distance, a wooded cliff and promontory, on the edge of which is silhouetted a gabled chapel with religious figures in obeisance before it. A hilltop town and mountains are in the background.
    Exhibited
    London 1925 (29 - Italian Landsape - The White Monk); Manchester 1925 (63); Birmingham 1948-49 (57 - wrong dimensions cited); London 1949 (56 - wrong dimensions cited); 1953, on loan to Salford Museum; London, Cardiff and New Haven, 1982-83 (103); Madrid 1988-89 (9); Great British Paintings from American Collections: Holbein to Hockney, YCBA New Haven 2001 and Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 2001-2 (20); New York 2010 (9); Tercentenary 2014 (96 - exhibited at YCBA only)
    Provenance
    Possibly Sir John Charles Robinson; Augustus Bampfylde, 2nd Baron Poltimore (1837-1908); James Orrock (1829-1913), 48, Bedford Square, London; 1st Viscount Leverhulme; 1910 Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight (627); with Arthur Tooth, London 1934; deaccessioned 1958; Thomas Agnew & Sons, London; bt by Edward Drummond Libbey and given to the Toledo Museum of Art, 1958
    Signature/inscription
    Inscribed on the rock at lower left: W
    Techniques and materials
    There is a pentiment in the foliage profile on the cliff
    Subject
    The subject and thence the meaning remain open to multiple interpretations. David Solkin memorably explained its attraction as a moral landscape by an emblematic interpretation of the Platonic philosophical concept of concordia discors, or the harmonious union of opposing elements, where 'the chaotic multiplicity of nature has yielded to the ordering hand of art.' (Solkin 1982, p. 66). He saw the inclusion of monks on the promontory as reassurance of a world anchored in divinely ordained harmony and reinforcing the moral certitude and authority of the patrician class who patronised the artist.
    Related Drawings
    D344 Banks of the Tiber 1757, Rhode Island Museum of Art, School of Design, Providence
    Related Prints
    E17 James Roberts after Wilson, The White Monk (Untitled), The British Museum and other impressions
    E72/22 Thomas Hastings after Wilson, The White Monk, 1822, The British Museum (1854,0708.79) and other impressions
    Versions
    See 'Links' tab
    Related Paintings
    P145 The White Monk - II, The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston
    P145A The White Monk - II, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    P145B The White Monk - II, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton
    P146 The White Monk - III, Private Collection
    P146A The White Monk - III, Gemaldegalerie Alta Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
    P146B The White Monk - III, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
    P147 Studio of Wilson, The White Monk - IV, Royal Academy of Arts, London
    P147A Ascribed to Wilson, The White Monk - IV (Italian Landscape, with white Monk), Museums Sheffield
    Critical commentary
    As noted by Martin Postle (Wilson and Europe 2014, p.281) Wilson in this composition establishes a characteristic contrast between the constrictions of organised religion - the figure in grey appears to be flagellating the monk in white - and the dolce far niente symbolised by the relaxed figures in the foreground. Postle also posited a more exact setting than previously acknowledged, e.g. by W.G. Constable, who recorded that it had sometimes been identified as Tivoli or a lower part of the Aniene gorge. He proposed the upper Aniene valley, looking east towards the Prenestini mountains and the rocky outcrops of Mentorella and Guadagnolo. This is an area associated historically with a chain of Benedictine monasteries, thus providing context for the presence of monks on the promontory. The White Monk was the most frequently repeated of all Wilson's compositions, a classic 'good breeder' as the artist described them (Wright 1824, p. 33). In this first of three main variants of the composition, two figures are shown seated under the parasol and there is a sapling behind and to the left of the trees at the right. A gabled chapel is silhouetted at the extremity of the cliffs instead of the more usual wayside cross. The present work is stylistically datable among the earliest and is also among the most highly finished. It is closely linked to a studio painting without the figures by the parasol, recently attributed to William Hodges by Jonathan Yarker (P147). The popular title, The White Monk, was applied first to a print made from a different version of the composition, then belonging to Lady Ford and published in Hastings 1825 (E72/22).
    Previous Cat/Ref Nos
    627
    Bibliography
    R.R. Tatlock, R. Fry, R.L. Hobson, P. Macquoid & C.R. Grundy, A Record of the Collections in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, formed by the First Viscount Leverhulme, vol. 1, 1928, p. 69, no. 627, pl. 44; The Connoisseur, March 1952; Bury 1947, p. 68; WGC, pp. 227-30, pl. 122a; E.P. Lawson, 'The Pastoral Scene', Toledo Museum of Art News, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 1960), pp. 35, 36 (repr.); 'Accessions of American and Canadian Museums', Art Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 3, (Autumn 1960, pp. 302, 314 (repr.); O. Wittmann, 'Treasures at Toledo, Ohio', Apollo, January 1965, p. 29; Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo 1976, p. 362, pl. 317; H. Behm, 'Ein Begrunder der Englischen Landschaftsmaleriei', Weltkunst, vol. 53, no. 4, (15 February 1983), p. 411, pl. 6; Solkin 1982, pp. 66-70, 214-15; M. Warner and R. Asleson, Great British Paintings from American Collections, 2001, pp. 97-99; M.A. Pelizzari, ed., Traces of India: Photography, Architecture and the Politics of Representation, 1850-1900, New Haven and London, 2003, pp. 70-71, fig. 5; Feigen 2010, unpaginated; Wilson and Europe 2014, pp. 280-81; M. Postle, 'Meditations on The White Monk' in J. Clifton & M. Kervandjian eds., A Golden Age of European Art: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, 2016, pp. 100-113, esp. pp. 103-104, 106 & 109
    Link to WG Constable Archive Record
    WGC/1/1/138
    More Information
    The large number of known versions of The White Monk confirm it as one of Wilson's most popular pictures - well over 30 survive, including those made by studio assistants and copyists. All seem to have been executed in Britain after the painter's return from Italy in 1757 and most of them after 1765, when an engraving was published by James Roberts (E17). None, however, seem to have been exhibited during Wilson's lifetime. Three main variant compositions were defined by W.G. Constable, and the present compiler has retained his system, entitling them The White Monk - I, etc.
    Condition/Conservation
    Mounted in a rococo frame
    Updated by Compiler
    2020-11-17 00:00:00

    Work of Art

    Drawings

    • Banks of the Tiber 1757, Rhode Island Museum of Art, School of Design, Providence

    Prints

    • James Roberts after Wilson, The White Monk (Untitled), The British Museum
    • James Roberts after Wilson, The White Monk (Untitled), National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • Thomas Hastings after Wilson, The White Monk, 1822, The British Museum (1854,0708.79)

    Versions

    • Ascribed to Wilson, The White Monk - I, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)and Studio, The White Monk - I, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The White Monk - I, Private Collection
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The White Monk - I, Private Collection, London

    Paintings

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The White Monk - II, The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The White Monk - II, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The White Monk - II, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The White Monk - III, Private Collection
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The White Monk - III, Gemaldegalerie Alta Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The White Monk - III, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
    • Studio of Wilson, The White Monk - IV, Royal Academy of Arts, London
    • Ascribed to Wilson, The White Monk - IV (Italian Landscape, with white Monk), Museums Sheffield

    Exhibitions

    • London, Tate Gallery, Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, and New Haven, Conn., Yale Center for British Art, 3 November 1982 - 19 June 1983
    • Birmingham City Art Gallery, 17 November 1948 - 9 January 1949
    • London, Tate Gallery, 22 January - 14 March 1949
    • London, National Gallery, Millbank (Tate Gallery), 26 June - 30 September 1925
    • Manchester City Art Gallery, 22 October - 5 December 1925
    • New York, Richard L. Feigen & Co., 29 April - 25 June 2010
    • New Haven, Yale Center for British Art & Cardiff, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, 6 March - 29 October 2014
    • Madrid, Prado, 18 October 1988 - 8 January 1989

    Biographies

    • Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913)

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
    • David Solkin, Richard Wilson: The Landscape of Reaction
    • Martin Postle & Robin Simon, Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting
    • Adrian Bury, Richard Wilson, R.A.: The Grand Classic
    • Richard Feigen and Ann Guité, Richard Wilson and the British Arcadia
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