Thomas Jones
1742–1803 · Kingdom of Great Britain, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland · Landscape painting, Neoclassicism, Romanticism
The story
Probably in the summer of 1782, a Welsh painter living in Naples went up to the roof terrace of his lodgings on the Vicolo del Canale, a lane on the slope toward Capodimonte, and painted the wall of a house across the street. The result, now in the National Gallery in London, is a sheet of paper only 16 centimetres wide. It shows shuttered windows, holes left by scaffolding, patched plaster, washing on a balcony and a stain beneath it, under a strip of intensely blue sky.
Thomas Jones had trained in London under Richard Wilson, the Welsh landscape painter, and in Italy he painted landscapes in Wilson's classical manner for patrons and travellers. The small oil sketches of Naples walls and rooftops were painted for himself and never meant for exhibition. He spent seven years in Italy and came home in 1783. Four years later he inherited the family estate of Pencerrig in Radnorshire, and in 1791 he served as the county's high sheriff.
His memoirs were published only in 1951, and the sketches stayed with his descendants until the 1950s. This one appeared at Christie's in July 1955, catalogued as An Italian house, one of three in a single lot that sold for 14 pounds. The National Gallery bought it in 1993.
