.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The Welsh-born artist Richard Wilson initially trained as a portraitist and took to painting landscapes before setting off for Italy in 1750. His seven-year sojourn there started in Venice and lead ultimately to Rome and Naples, where he became familiar with the work of Poussin, Claude, Rosa and Jan Frans van Bloemen. Wilson's connections in Italy and his aptitude for the Classics made him an ideal tutor to the Grand Tourists, who would become his most important patrons.
The Torre delle Grotte is probably situated on the coast of Fusaro, south of Salerno. This remarkable site is distinguished by its outcrop of rock with natural caves topped by a ruined fort. The present painting, lacking in any overt reference to antiquity, stands apart in Wilson's oeuvre. The focus here is on the romantic, picturesque qualities of the landscape, as studied from life en plein air, much like his superb Tivoli, the Temple of Maecenas (Constable, pl. 119a). A drawing of this view contained in a sketchbook from 1752, now at the Victoria and Albert Museum (op cit., pl. 78b), provides the date for this work.
Wilson painted this view on two other occasions: a signed canvas in the Mrs. L'Estrange Malone collection, Scampston, York (17 x 27½ in.), considered by Waterhouse and Constable to be the finest variant; and another unsigned picture in the collection of Sir John Molesworth-St. Aubyn, Bt., Pencarrow (21 x 29 in.).
The Torre delle Grotte is probably situated on the coast of Fusaro, south of Salerno. This remarkable site is distinguished by its outcrop of rock with natural caves topped by a ruined fort. The present painting, lacking in any overt reference to antiquity, stands apart in Wilson's oeuvre. The focus here is on the romantic, picturesque qualities of the landscape, as studied from life en plein air, much like his superb Tivoli, the Temple of Maecenas (Constable, pl. 119a). A drawing of this view contained in a sketchbook from 1752, now at the Victoria and Albert Museum (op cit., pl. 78b), provides the date for this work.
Wilson painted this view on two other occasions: a signed canvas in the Mrs. L'Estrange Malone collection, Scampston, York (17 x 27½ in.), considered by Waterhouse and Constable to be the finest variant; and another unsigned picture in the collection of Sir John Molesworth-St. Aubyn, Bt., Pencarrow (21 x 29 in.).