Roderick Conway-Morris

How Richard Wilson made Wales beautiful

Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting, at the National Museum Wales, is a revealing look at an artist who inspired Turner and Constable

‘Llyn Cau, Cader Idris’, 1765–67, by Richard Wilson [Tate, London] 
issue 16 August 2014

‘I recollect nothing so much as a solemn — bright — warm — fresh landscape by Wilson, which swims in my brain like a delicious dream,’ wrote Constable of his encounter with the Welsh artist’s ‘Tabley House, Cheshire’ after he visited the gallery of that house owned by Sir John Leicester. Recalling this epiphany, Constable went on to say of Richard Wilson: ‘He was one of the great appointments to shew to the world what exists in nature but which was not known till his time.’

Turner, too, was an ardent Wilson admirer and as a young man set out on a reverential pilgrimage to Wales, seeking out his birthplace at Penegoes below the peak of Cader Idris and following ‘in the footsteps of Wilson’ to those places amid the wild mountainscapes of North Wales that Wilson had captured for the first time in paint.

Wilson not only inspired these two great English landscape painters, his influence was also widely felt on the Continent and in the colonies, as this splendid exhibition, the first devoted to Wilson in more than 30 years, reveals as never before.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in