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    300 years
    Return to "Manchester 1925" is linked to these Works 42 items
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    The Vale of Narni

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    The Vale of Narni
    The Vale of Narni
    The Vale of Narni
    Private Collection, England / Photograph by John Hammond
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    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
    WGC/1/1/99
    Updated by Compiler
    2021-01-19 00:00:00

    Work of Art

    Prints

    • Thomas Hastings after Wilson, The Vale of Narni, The British Museum

    Paintings

    • Landscape Capriccio on the Via Aemilia, Private Collection, New York
    • Landscape Capriccio on the Via Aemilia, with the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli and the broken Bridge at Narni, Private Collection, England
    • Italian River Landscape with a broken Bridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
    • The Broken Bridge at Narni, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery

    Exhibitions

    • London, Tate Gallery, Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, and New Haven, Conn., Yale Center for British Art, 3 November 1982 - 19 June 1983
    • Brighton, Fine Art Galleries, 28 February - 2 May 1920
    • London, National Gallery, Millbank (Tate Gallery), 26 June - 30 September 1925
    • Manchester City Art Gallery, 22 October - 5 December 1925
    • Conwy, Royal Cambrian Academy, 24 October - 23 December 2009
    • Weston Park, The Granary Art Gallery, 2 April - 3 July 2011
    • London, Royal Academy, 14 December 1968 - 2 March 1969
    • Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 7 March - 5 April 1946
    • New Haven, Yale Center for British Art & Cardiff, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, 6 March - 29 October 2014

    Biographies

    • Benjamin Booth (1732-1807)
    • Sir Brinsley Ford (1908-1999)
    • Marianne Booth, Lady Ford (1767-1849)
    • Sir Richard Ford (1758-1806)

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
    • David Solkin, Richard Wilson: The Landscape of Reaction
    • Peter Lord, Richard Wilson. Life & Legacy
    • Deborah Howard, 'Some Eighteenth-Century English Followers of Claude'
    • Martin Postle & Robin Simon, Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting
    • Brinsley Ford and other authors, The Ford Collection
    • Luke Herrmann, British Landscape Painting of the Eighteenth Century
    • Gareth Williams, Masterpieces from the Ford Collection
    • Benjamin Booth, Unpublished Notes, Document 9: List of Wilson's Landscapes with Sizes and former Owners
    • A.L. Rowse, Poems of Deliverance
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