Wilson (Richard), R.A.
RICHARD WILSON was born in Montgomeryshire in the year 1713. He excelled as a landscape painter. After practising some time in London, he was enabled, by the assistance of relations, to travel into Italy, where he renewed the study of portrait painting, in which he had made some progress when in London. But the peculiar form and bias of his genius was landscape, as was shown so powerfully later in life by his famous productions, among others, of “Niobe” and the “Villa of Mæcenas.” An incident which happened during his visit to Italy tended to confirm him in his inclination to follow landscape instead of portrait painting. The celebrated French painter, Vernet, happening one day when in Rome to visit Wilson’s painting-room, was so struck with a landscape Wilson had painted that he requested to become the possessor of it, offering in exchange one of his best pictures. The proposal was readily accepted, and Vernet kindly recommended Wilson to the English nobility and gentry then visiting Rome. It is said of Wilson that at times, through his intemperate and irregular habits, he was obliged to pawn his pictures, and was sometimes unable to procure canvas or colours. Fuseli, though generally severe in his criticism of the “map makers,” as he designated the landscape painters of his day, formed what I consider an exaggerated estimate of Wilson’s merits. He says of him: “He is now numbered with the classics of the Art, though little more than the fifth of a century has elapsed since death relieved him from the apathy of cognoscenti, the envy of rivals, and the neglect of a tasteless public; for Wilson, whose works will soon command prices as proud as those of Claude, Poussin, or Elzheimer, resembled the last most in his fate,—lived and died nearer to indigence than ease; and as an asylum for the severest wants incident to age and decay of powers, was reduced to solicit the librarian’s place in the Academy of which he was one of the brightest ornaments.” Wilson died on the 11th of May, 1782, aged 69.
A SCENE AT CHRISTIE’S.
“Towards the close of Wilson’s life, annoyed and oppressed by the neglect which he experienced, it is well known that he unfortunately had recourse to those means of temporary oblivion of the world to which disappointed genius but too frequently resorts. The natural consequence was, that the works which he then produced were much inferior to those of his former days,—a fact of which, of course, he was not himself conscious. One morning, Mr. Christie, to whom had been entrusted the sale by auction of a fine collection of pictures belonging to a nobleman, having arrived at a chef-d’œuvre of Wilson’s, was expatiating with his usual eloquence on its merits, quite unaware that Wilson himself had just before entered the room. ‘This, gentlemen, is one of Mr. Wilson’s Italian pictures; he cannot paint anything like it now.’ ‘That’s a lie!’ exclaimed the irritated artist, to Mr. Christie’s no small discomposure, and to the great amusement of the company; ‘he can paint infinitely better.’”—Literary Gazette, 1824.