British painter Richard Wilson it elevated English landscape painting to new heights, uniting its topographical traditions with those of the great landscape masters of the seventeenth century.
Richard Wilson born in Penygoes, Montgomeryshire (Wales), on August 1, 1713 or 1714; He was the third son of the rector of Penygoes, thanks to whom he received an excellent education in classical literature. In 1729, Richard went to London to train with the portrait painter Thomas Wright. Family connections with the aristocracy helped Wilson to obtain numerous commissions to paint portraits, including one of the royal family, but his reputation among artists was mainly due to his topographical landscapes, imbued with a strong feeling for naturalism in the open air. In 1746 he painted for the Founding Hospital, the works Founding Hospital Y St. George’s Hospital.
In 1750 Wilson he traveled to Venice and a year later to Rome, where Salvator Rosa was his prime example in dramatic landscapes with storms, shipwrecks and bandits. During six years, Wilson made an intensive study of the Italian landscape, especially the scenes with classical associations, working his outdoor sketches as studio works, strongly influenced in his handling of light and air by the Dutch masters and in his composition by Gaspard Dughet, Nicolas Poussin and Claudio de Lorena.
After his return to England around 1756 or 1757, Wilson he settled in an apartment on the Great Plaza in Covent Garden, where he also had a study for his students. He forged his path to fame with a series of covers of Destruction of the Daughters of Niobe, one of which was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1760.
Between 1765 and 1769 he left his apartment in Covent Garden. Elected a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768, he established a practice that was both important and lucrative, but his sporadic ill health, generosity, susceptibility, and unpaid time spent painting imposing and heroic landscapes, contributed to his diminishing fortune. His appointment as librarian to the Royal Academy in 1776 was largely a gesture of charity.
Wilson he visited his beloved Wales frequently, and retired there in 1781. He died at Colomendy, Denbighshire, the following year, on May 11, 1782. His Welsh landscapes, such as Snowdon (1766) and Cader Idris (1774), as well as his paintings of the English countryside, are highly original paintings that announce the romantic exaltation of nature and solitude.