Diana and Callisto (after Wilson)

This is a copy, made in 1796, after a landscape by Richard Wilson, the Welsh painter who had done more than anyone to give British art its taste for grand, Italian-looking scenery. Wilson had died in 1782, and by the 1790s his compositions were being studied and copied by younger landscapists learning their craft. The subject comes from Ovid: the goddess Diana discovers that her attendant Callisto is pregnant by Jupiter and casts her out, a small figure drama set deep in a wide golden valley. Who painted this particular version is unsettled. The Tate, which received it as part of the Turner Bequest, lists it as attributed to the young Joseph Mallord William Turner, who would have been about 21 at the time, while other records leave the painter unknown.