Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson was one of the earliest British artists to spend an extended period in Rome, staying there for much of the 1750s. While his title for the drawing designates a general location, his broad, monochromatic technique makes the precise site on the Tiber riverbank difficult to identify, indicating the artist’s interest in the general over the specific. Wilson’s familiarity with the philosophy of the sublime, in which nature is awe-inspiring, grand, and ultimately unknowable, is evident in the effect of light created with white chalk, which mysteriously illuminates the small church atop the hill.