Skip to content
Log inRegister
    HomePaintingsDrawingsPrintsBrowse all worksWilson collectionsWilson collections mapTercentenary exhibitionOther exhibitionsProject highlightsThemes and mediaBiographiesBibliographical Resources
    Advanced search
    Work of ArtBiographiesExhibitionsBibliographical Resources
    Settings
    Pages
    300 years
    Return to "WGC" is linked to these Works 387 items
    of 387

    A View of Elizabethan Chatsworth

    This item is active and ready to use
    A View of Elizabethan Chatsworth
    A View of Elizabethan Chatsworth
    A View of Elizabethan Chatsworth
    Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth / The Bridgeman Art Library
    title=Credit line
    Larger imageShareFeedback
    Artist
    Ascribed to Wilson
    Title
    A View of Elizabethan Chatsworth
    Date
    Before 1750 (undated)
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    Metric: 99.1 x 124.5 cm
    Imperial: 40 x 50 in.
    Collection
    Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. To license image, click here.
    Wilson Online Reference
    P29
    Exhibited
    Thomas Agnew, The Devonshire Collection, 1948(43)
    Provenance
    There is no record of how the picture came to Chatsworth, nor of any connection with Wilson
    Signature/inscription
    Unsigned; no inscription
    Subject
    The house appears as it was between 1676 and 1686 since it shows the sash windows that the 3rd Earl of Devonshire began to insert in 1676, while in 1686 the 4th Earl (later the 1st Duke) began to pull the house down. The figures in the foreground wear late seventeenth-century dress.
    Related Paintings
    P72 Lake Nemi and Genzano from the Terrace of the Capuchin Monastery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
    Critical commentary
    The work is an intriguing mystery and as W.G. Constable remarked, how Wilson could have come to paint it is pure speculation. Possibly it is a copy of an earlier picture, including the most typical aspects such as the sky and hillside. Yet the device of the foreground road cutting across the angle of the picture is an eighteenth-century convention. It was used by Wilson, for example in P72 Lake Nemi and Genzano from the Terrace of the Capuchin Monastery. Yet there is no evidence of Wilson's having had any connection with the Dukes of Devonshire. Conceivably the Earl of Burlington, father-in-law of the 3rd Duke and a patron of George Lambert, might have been involved but it is more probable that, as noted by John Harris, the painting is an anonymous eighteenth-century capriccio based upon existing architectural documents of the Elizabethan mansion.
    Previous Cat/Ref Nos
    43
    Bibliography
    F. Thompson, Foreword to Catalogue of Agnew Exhibition, 1948, pp. 8-9; F. Thompson, History of Chatsworth, 1949, pp. 24, 65n.; Waterhouse 1953, p. 177; WGC, pp. 21 n.1, 76, 172, pl. 31b; J. Harris, The Artist and the Country House, 1979, p. 75. fig. 72
    Link to WG Constable Archive Record
    WGC/1/1/36
    Updated by Compiler
    2016-03-14 00:00:00

    Work of Art

    Paintings

    • Lake Nemi and Genzano from the Terrace of the Capuchin Monastery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Biographies

    • George Lambert (1700-1765)

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
    • Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse, Painting in Britain 1530-1790
    © Richard Wilson OnlineCreditsCopyright & DisclaimerPrivacy