Artwork Information

Wilson was the most celebrated of the 18th-century British landscape painters. Until his travels in Italy between 1750 and 1757 he had been almost exclusively a portrait painter, but, encouraged first by Zuccarelli and then by Claude-Joseph Vernet, he turned seriously to landscape, particularly scenes of the Roman Campagna. His style owed much to the masters of the previous century, from whom he learned how the unification of light and atmosphere could convey an evocative mood.