House of Pompey at Albano

Richard Wilson British, Welsh

Not on view

Wilson began his career as a portraitist but turned exclusively to landscape during a trip to Italy in the 1750s. At that time, he set out to train himself as a landscapist by making on-the-spot sketches in the Italian countryside and compositional sketches in the studio. This delicately rendered townscape was no doubt made on the spot when he visited Albano, perhaps in 1754, and includes none of the artificial devices that characterize his studio works. The ruins in the city, situated in the Alban Hills, twelve miles southeast of Rome, are today recognized as ancient baths. In the eighteenth century, they were thought to belong to the palace of Pompeius Magnus (106-48 B.C.).

House of Pompey at Albano, Richard Wilson (British, Penegoes, Wales 1712/13–1782 Denbighshire, Wales), Black chalk touched with white chalk on gray paper

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House of Pompey at Albano, Richard Wilson (British, Penegoes, Wales 1712/13–1782 Denbighshire, Wales), Black chalk touched with white chalk on gray paper
House of Pompey at Albano, Richard Wilson (British, Penegoes, Wales 1712/13–1782 Denbighshire, Wales), Black chalk touched with white chalk on gray paper

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