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    300 years
    Return to "WGC" is linked to these Works 387 items
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    On Hounslow Heath

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    On Hounslow Heath
    On Hounslow Heath
    On Hounslow Heath
    Collection of Richard L. Feigen
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    Artist
    Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
    Title
    On Hounslow Heath
    Date
    c.1765 (undated)
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    Metric: [37 x 46.2 cm]
    Imperial: 14 1/2 x 18 3/16 in.
    Collection
    Collection of Richard L. Feigen. To license images click here.
    Wilson Online Reference
    P131B
    Description
    An extensive landscape with a market woman in a red dress seated on a bank in the left foreground, her back to the viewer and a basket by her side. Beyond is a river, on the near bank of which two donkeys are grazing. Upstream are a weir and a thickly-wooded island.
    Exhibited
    RA Old Masters Exhibition, 1894 (42); Agnew 1926 (20); London 1934 (218 - View on the Thames); New York 2010 (12)
    Provenance
    Apparently acquired from the artist in 1765 by the London journalist and political writer Thomas Green (1722-94) [...] Albert Levy, sold 1876; Col. W.L. Grant; Christie's 18 June 1881 (91), bt Butler; Charles Butler; Christie's 26 May 1911 (155) bt Agnew; H. Pritchard Gordon, Esq.; Christie's 1 May 1925 (113), bt Agnew (115 gns/£120.15.0); C. Nicholls & Sons, 1928; Sir George Agnew, Bart, Rougham Hall, Bury St Edmunds; Private collection, France; Sotheby's London, 16 July 1986 (73); bt Richard L. Feigen, New York City
    Signature/inscription
    Signed lower left: RW [monogram, the R reversed]
    Subject
    The view, looking east, shows part of the watermeadows beside the River Crane near Whitton Place, an estate on Hounslow Heath acquired in 1765 by Wilson's friend, the architect Sir William Chambers.
    Related Drawings
    D360 A View of On Hounslow Heath, Private Collection, UK, c/o Lowell Libson Ltd
    Related Prints
    E72/1 Thomas Hastings after Richard Wilson:
    E72/1 The British Museum
    E72/1A The British Museum
    E72/1B Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
    Versions
    See 'Links' tab
    Critical commentary
    The site is undistinguished, not more than a piece of common nature, and treated in the unpretentious manner of seventeenth-century Dutch art. The attraction lies in the beauty of the sky and the reflections in the water and bears witness to an increasing naturalism which came to characterise Wilson's later British views, both in terms of subject matter and also in the manner of describing detail and the outdoor phenomena of light and enveloping atmosphere.
    Bibliography
    Commemorative Catalogue 1934 (99); WGC, p. 178, pl. 37b (version 3); Hayes 1964, pp. 338-39, fig. 37; Hayes 1967, p. 258; Feigen 2010, unpaginated
    More Information
    In his introduction to Etchings from the Works of Ric. Wilson, with some Memoirs of his Life &c., Hastings says 'Paul Sandby was with Richard Wilson at the time the Sketch was made for the subject of Honslow Heath' (p.9). However it is unclear whether this refers to a drawing, an independent sketch in oil or the lay-in for the finished picture.
    Condition/Conservation
    Cleaned 1986 by Alexander Dunluce, Chief Conservator of the Tate Gallery, when the monogram at the lower left was discovered.

    Work of Art

    Drawings

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), A View of On Hounslow Heath, Private Collection, UK, c/o Lowell Libson Ltd

    Prints

    • Thomas Hastings after Richard Wilson, On Hounslow Heath, The British Museum
    • Thomas Hastings after Richard Wilson, On Hounslow Heath, Outer Suburb, West, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
    • Thomas Hastings after Richard Wilson, On Hounslow Heath, The British Museum

    Exhibitions

    • New York, Richard L. Feigen & Co., 29 April - 25 June 2010
    • London, Royal Academy, 6 January - 17 March 1934
    • London, Thomas Agnew & Sons, November and December 1926

    Biographies

    • Sir William Chambers (1722-1796)

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
    • John Hayes, 'An unknown Wilson Drawing of Hounslow Heath'
    • Richard Feigen and Ann Guité, Richard Wilson and the British Arcadia
    • John Hayes, 'British Patrons and Landscape Painting: 4. Eighteenth-Century Patronage'
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