Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson was born in Penegoes, Montgoms, 1713/14 and died in Colomendy, Denbs, May 11, 1782.

In his day, Wilson was known as the "English Claude" in tribute to his emulation of the idealistic landscape conventions of the seventeenth-century painter Claude Lorrain. Classically educated, Wilson was apprenticed for six years to a professional portrait copyist in London before pursuing an independent career. His visit to Italy in 1750-57 was crucial in encouraging him to devote himself to landscape. Although most of his commissions were for topographical works, Wilson's approach to landscape was essentially poetic, and his paintings are distinguished by sentiment and literary allusion, as well as by orderly composition and rich atmosphere. Wilson exhibited extensively at the Society of Artists in the 1760s and was a founding member of the Royal Academy.