The Convent on a Rock (Santa Maria Aventina)
Richard Wilson (Penegoes 1714 - Mold 1782)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1770 - 1782 - 1803 - 1817 (exh at BI?)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
356 x 448 mm (14 x 17 1/2 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Upton House, Warwickshire
NT 446714
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, The Convent on a Rock (Santa Maria Aventina) by Richard Wilson RA (Penegoes 1714 – Mold 1782). At the right a Renaissance building surmounts a classical structure which has been built on a rock or artificial rampart; two figures are resting in front; the ground falls away to a river and bridge at the left. There exist five versions of this picture, all differing in minor details. The lack of accomplishment in the execution of the figures, suggests that this is not the original version. It is possible that it was to this picture that Joseph Farington was referring when he wrote '[Benjamin] West, PRA has been cleaning his collection of pictures […] He dwelt upon his little picture of the Convent on the Rock by Wilson, saying it was coloured equal to Cuyp or Both & in parts like Titian' (Farington Diary, 2 October 1803).
Provenance
Possibly Benjamin West (1738-1820), who owned one of the two versions of Convent on the Rock by Richard Wilson (the other is now in the collection of Magdalene College, Oxford, P0808), however which of the two versions West owned is uncertain; thus, possibly Benjamin West sale, Christie's 28 May 1824 (20), bought Samuel Rogers (1763-1855); possibly Samuel Rogers sale, Christie's 28 April 1856 (172, 'Italian Landscape with a convent on a rocky height...From President West's Collection'); possibly bought W. Sharp; Col. M.H. Grant; possibly bought October 1946 Lt. Col. R.H.R. Brocklebank; acquired by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearstead (1853-1927) with no details of its earlier history; given with Upton House to the National Trust by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted (1882 – 1948), in 1948, shortly before his death.
Credit line
Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Richard Wilson (Penegoes 1714 - Mold 1782), artist
Exhibition history
In the light of Cuyp. Aelbert Cuyp & Gainsborough - Constable -Turner , Dordrechts Museum, 2021 - 2022
References
Spencer-Longhurst 2014: Paul Spencer-Longhurst, with Kate Lowry and David Solkin, Richard Wilson Online: A Digital Catalogue Raisonné, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London 2014, P 94 Enklaar and Paarlberg 2021: Marlies Enklaar and Sander Paarlberg (eds.), In the Light of Cuyp: Aelbert Cuyp & Gainsborough - Constable – Turner, exh. cat., Dordrechts Museum, 3 October 2021 – 6 March 2022, pp. 118-9, no. 35