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拍品專文
This extensive landscape showing Bourne Park, Kent, was painted by Wilson soon after his return from Italy in 1757 and is the artist's first country house view, a genre that he would develop over the following decade which would help establish his reputation as the ‘father of British landscape painting’.
Situated south of Canterbury and next to the Little Stour River, Bourne Park was built by Elizabeth, Lady Aucher in 1701 for her son, Sir Hewitt Aucher, 3rd Bt., on the site of an old house that had been originally owned by the Bourne family. When Sir Hewitt died in 1726 the house passed to his eldest sister, Elizabeth, who married Dr. Corbett. Their eldest daughter married the antiquarian collector Stephen Beckingham (c.1730-1813) who commissioned this picture.
The dating of this fine landscape within Wilson's oeuvre has been the subject of some debate by scholars. Constable (op. cit.) described the picture in his 1953 catalogue of Wilson's work as being dated 1774. However, David Solkin (op. cit.) has observed that any such date is no longer visible and that the landscape would appear to have been executed at a considerably earlier point in the artist's career. He notes the style and technique - the 'overlapping of foliage in green and rust-coloured screens, the extensive application of very small and precise brushstrokes throughout a smoothly polished foreground, and the use of a range of blues and blue-greys to give a complex modelling to the sky' (ibid.) - is entirely consistent with Wilson's work from the late 1750s when he was much influenced by Gaspard Dughet and the tradition of the Dutch panoramic landscape. He compares the picture stylistically with Wilson’s Tivoli: Villa of Maecenas (c.1756-7; London, Tate Britain), and notes the artist's use of 'Gaspardesque repoussoirs' (ibid.) in the form of the unbalanced trees which, in this picture, draw the viewer's attention to the sunlit east front of the house. Moreover, Solkin argues that Stephen Beckingham, who had been one of Wilson’s most important patrons in Rome, was then living at Bourne Park and was surely the obvious patron. This earlier dating of the picture has been more recently supported by Paul Spencer-Longhurst (op. cit.).
Beckingham was introduced to Wilson’s work in Rome, through his friendship with William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, by the painter and agent Thomas Jenkins. He subsequently acquired four pictures from the artist, two of which have been identified as the Landscape on the Via Aemilia and the Landscape Capriccio with the Tomb of the Horatti and Curatii, and the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, both of which are now in private collections.
With this picture Wilson establishes a formula for the country house view that he would develop over the following decade. During this period he received commissions to paint various estates: these included his views of Wilton House, Wiltshire, (one of which, dated circa 1758-60, is now at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven); Croome Court, Worcestershire (1758-9; Private collection); Tabley House, Cheshire (c.1764-65; Private collection, on loan to Tabley House); and the View of Minchenden House, the Seat of the Duke of Chandos (c.1765-7; Private collection).
Situated south of Canterbury and next to the Little Stour River, Bourne Park was built by Elizabeth, Lady Aucher in 1701 for her son, Sir Hewitt Aucher, 3rd Bt., on the site of an old house that had been originally owned by the Bourne family. When Sir Hewitt died in 1726 the house passed to his eldest sister, Elizabeth, who married Dr. Corbett. Their eldest daughter married the antiquarian collector Stephen Beckingham (c.1730-1813) who commissioned this picture.
The dating of this fine landscape within Wilson's oeuvre has been the subject of some debate by scholars. Constable (op. cit.) described the picture in his 1953 catalogue of Wilson's work as being dated 1774. However, David Solkin (op. cit.) has observed that any such date is no longer visible and that the landscape would appear to have been executed at a considerably earlier point in the artist's career. He notes the style and technique - the 'overlapping of foliage in green and rust-coloured screens, the extensive application of very small and precise brushstrokes throughout a smoothly polished foreground, and the use of a range of blues and blue-greys to give a complex modelling to the sky' (ibid.) - is entirely consistent with Wilson's work from the late 1750s when he was much influenced by Gaspard Dughet and the tradition of the Dutch panoramic landscape. He compares the picture stylistically with Wilson’s Tivoli: Villa of Maecenas (c.1756-7; London, Tate Britain), and notes the artist's use of 'Gaspardesque repoussoirs' (ibid.) in the form of the unbalanced trees which, in this picture, draw the viewer's attention to the sunlit east front of the house. Moreover, Solkin argues that Stephen Beckingham, who had been one of Wilson’s most important patrons in Rome, was then living at Bourne Park and was surely the obvious patron. This earlier dating of the picture has been more recently supported by Paul Spencer-Longhurst (op. cit.).
Beckingham was introduced to Wilson’s work in Rome, through his friendship with William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, by the painter and agent Thomas Jenkins. He subsequently acquired four pictures from the artist, two of which have been identified as the Landscape on the Via Aemilia and the Landscape Capriccio with the Tomb of the Horatti and Curatii, and the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, both of which are now in private collections.
With this picture Wilson establishes a formula for the country house view that he would develop over the following decade. During this period he received commissions to paint various estates: these included his views of Wilton House, Wiltshire, (one of which, dated circa 1758-60, is now at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven); Croome Court, Worcestershire (1758-9; Private collection); Tabley House, Cheshire (c.1764-65; Private collection, on loan to Tabley House); and the View of Minchenden House, the Seat of the Duke of Chandos (c.1765-7; Private collection).