拍品專文
Datable circa 1744-5, this picture is, with the slightly smaller Caernarvon Castle from the Tennant collection, one of the masterpieces of Wilson's early maturity. Professor David Solkin in his entry for the picture in the 1982-3 catalogue, observes that it 'shows early Wilson at his most rococo: among his other extant works, only the Westminster Bridge and the Caernarvon Castle (1982-3 exhibition, nos. 5 and 7) show anything comparable in the way of pastel tints and rich variations in surface textures'.
The view has not been identified, but as Professor Solkin notes 'its specific topographical features strongly suggest that we are dealing with an actual place: the likeliest possibility, would be somewhere near the coast of North Wales' (op.cit., p. 26). While there can be no doubt that Wilson intended to evoke the Welsh landscape, it is arguably unlikely that he aspired to topographical fidelity. Here the Caernarvon Castle offers what is perhaps a revealing parallel: for Wilson took considerable liberties with both architectural detail and the landscape setting. For Wilson the art of landscape painting evidently transcended view painting: in the present picture, as in the Caernarvon Castle and many of the most successful of his later Italian landscapes, his genius found expression as a composer, rather than a mere recorder of landscapes. The unique quality of the present canvas is that, more than any other, it demonstrates that it was through Wilson's early response to the landscape of his native Wales, that he first revealed his genius as a painter of landscape.
Professor Solkin's account of the picture expresses his interpretation of Wilson's art:
Here Wilson offers the viewer a glimpse into a paradise of peace and plenty, where contented peasants and prosperous picnickers, neat cottages and a modest country house, co-exist in perfect harmony. This artifice of an ordered unity emerges from and depends upon a series of contrasts: between human beings of obviously different stations and their respective habitations, between a mountainous escarpment and a low-lying plain, one might also add between areas of light and shadow. Just as a composer joins together different notes to make a pleasing symphony, so has Wilson achieved unison through a careful orchestration of these opposing parts. With equal felicity he has resolved another important opposition, that between labour and leisure, by blending the one imperceptibly into the other. Here work for the peasants seems tantamount to a form of relaxation, while the standing gentleman looks away from his playful companions to make a responsible survey of his well-run world. The same qualities of frivolity and industriousness are also built into Wilson's particular pictorial language; as in many of Gainsborough's contemporary landscapes, the 'Lake and Cottages' displays a workmanlike, 'Dutch' description of natural details set within the leisurely structure of a rococo design. A sweeping S-curve leads our eye around the shore of the lake, up to the mountains, and then slowly back into the distance, where a church steeple pokes out over the horizon. This feature seems to give a Christian seal of approval to the artist's ideal of human perfection; though divided and hierarchical, this utopia evidently conforms to the divine plan (op.cit., p. 26).
No work by Wilson of the calibre of the present picture has been offered at auction for a generation. A View of Lake Nemi from the Mount Trust Collection, undoubtedly a masterpiece in the artist's oeuvre, was sold in these rooms on 26 March 1976 and achieved the record price of £150,000; while highlights of a different era include The River Dee from the Holford Collection which appeared at Christie's in 1928 and made the remarkable sum of 4100gns.
The view has not been identified, but as Professor Solkin notes 'its specific topographical features strongly suggest that we are dealing with an actual place: the likeliest possibility, would be somewhere near the coast of North Wales' (op.cit., p. 26). While there can be no doubt that Wilson intended to evoke the Welsh landscape, it is arguably unlikely that he aspired to topographical fidelity. Here the Caernarvon Castle offers what is perhaps a revealing parallel: for Wilson took considerable liberties with both architectural detail and the landscape setting. For Wilson the art of landscape painting evidently transcended view painting: in the present picture, as in the Caernarvon Castle and many of the most successful of his later Italian landscapes, his genius found expression as a composer, rather than a mere recorder of landscapes. The unique quality of the present canvas is that, more than any other, it demonstrates that it was through Wilson's early response to the landscape of his native Wales, that he first revealed his genius as a painter of landscape.
Professor Solkin's account of the picture expresses his interpretation of Wilson's art:
Here Wilson offers the viewer a glimpse into a paradise of peace and plenty, where contented peasants and prosperous picnickers, neat cottages and a modest country house, co-exist in perfect harmony. This artifice of an ordered unity emerges from and depends upon a series of contrasts: between human beings of obviously different stations and their respective habitations, between a mountainous escarpment and a low-lying plain, one might also add between areas of light and shadow. Just as a composer joins together different notes to make a pleasing symphony, so has Wilson achieved unison through a careful orchestration of these opposing parts. With equal felicity he has resolved another important opposition, that between labour and leisure, by blending the one imperceptibly into the other. Here work for the peasants seems tantamount to a form of relaxation, while the standing gentleman looks away from his playful companions to make a responsible survey of his well-run world. The same qualities of frivolity and industriousness are also built into Wilson's particular pictorial language; as in many of Gainsborough's contemporary landscapes, the 'Lake and Cottages' displays a workmanlike, 'Dutch' description of natural details set within the leisurely structure of a rococo design. A sweeping S-curve leads our eye around the shore of the lake, up to the mountains, and then slowly back into the distance, where a church steeple pokes out over the horizon. This feature seems to give a Christian seal of approval to the artist's ideal of human perfection; though divided and hierarchical, this utopia evidently conforms to the divine plan (op.cit., p. 26).
No work by Wilson of the calibre of the present picture has been offered at auction for a generation. A View of Lake Nemi from the Mount Trust Collection, undoubtedly a masterpiece in the artist's oeuvre, was sold in these rooms on 26 March 1976 and achieved the record price of £150,000; while highlights of a different era include The River Dee from the Holford Collection which appeared at Christie's in 1928 and made the remarkable sum of 4100gns.