'[Claude-Joseph] Vernet [Vernet] passed on his own interest [in painting from nature] to a number of artists who encountered him in Rome, especially British painters such as Reynolds and Cozens, and the landscape painter Richard Wilson. Indeed, it was Vernet who encouraged Wilson to take up landscape painting, when the two artists met in Rome and shared lodgings at the Palazzo Zuccari on the Via Sistina. They also shared patrons such as Lord Dartmouth [Dartmouth] (through a common agent, Thomas Jenkins [Jenkins]) and Ralph Howard, later Earl [sic] of Wicklow [Howard, Ralph]. Vernet's influence must lie somewhere behind two works Wilson painted for Howard in 1752 [P44 & P45]' (p. 44).
'One solution [to the problem of reflective oil-paint in the open air] was to employ a parasol, such as the one shading an open-air painter at Tivoli in a drawing attributed to Wilson [D166]' (p. 44).
'Vernet was preparing to leave Rome for his native France in 1752, and Wilson probably saw the opportunity to pick up some of the Frenchman's lucrative business with British Grand Tourists. In Lord Dartmouth and Ralph Howard, later Lord Wicklow, and Joseph Leeson, later Lord Milltown, Vernet and Wilson shared patrons at this time.' (p. 109)
'With Wilson, British landscape came of age, and he is rightly regarded as the founder of the school. He was an example and inspiration to the Romantic generation of John Constable and J.M.W Turner. [ ... ] He was the key figure in establishing Italy and the Italian landscape as major subjects of British art in the second half of the eighteenth century.' (p. 110).
