National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Solitude
  • Overview
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

Richard Wilson began as a portraitist, although he also produced a few topographical paintings early in his career. During his stay in Italy in the 1750s he turned his attention exclusively to depictions of arcadian landscape and developed a personal style that freed him from the realistic constraints of his earlier works. Indeed, Italy's golden Mediterranean light and the ancient ruins that evoked the glory of its classical past affected Wilson long after his return to London in 1756. Like his contemporary Reynolds, Wilson sought to elevate the status of his genre of painting through the systematic application of classical standards.

In this landscape the artist draws on his memories of the Italian countryside as well as on his imagination to create a richly detailed panorama, suffused with a quiet and evocative mood. On a massive pedestal stands the ruin of a statue of a lion with a globe under its paw, symbolizing the inevitability of death and decay. The pagan hermit reading at the base of the statue and the two Christian monks to the left, their church highlighted in a clearing in the woods, seem to share a common hope of discovering answers to the mysteries of life.

Inscription

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Marks and Labels

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Provenance

Perhaps (Maddox Street Gallery), London, 1828(?). Mr. Gray, Ilkley, Yorkshire, after whose death it was bought 1839 by (Chaplin),[1] from whom it was probably purchased ca. 1839 by Andrew Fountaine [1808-1874], Narford Hall, King's Lynn, Norfolk;[2] by descent to Andrew Fountaine [b. 1918]; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 23 June 1972, no. 57 repro.); purchased by (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London) for Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA.

[1] Descriptions of the work(s) owned by the Maddox Street Gallery and Mr. Gray quoted in W.G. Constable, Richard Wilson, (London, 1953), 169, could apply equally well to the Washington picture and to an almost identical version in the M.D.G. Robinson collection (formerly in the Col. M.H. Grant collection, and also listed in Constable 1953, 169).

[2] Sir Geoffrey Agnew to Paul Mellon, 2 May 1972, in NGA curatorial files. It was certainly in Fountaine's possession by 1854, when it was noted in G. F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 4 vols. (London, 1854), 3: 431.

Exhibition History

1986
Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist

Bibliography

1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 438, repro.
1992
Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 336-339, color repro. 337.
1992
National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 145, repro.

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