The Valley of the Dee, with Chester in the Distance

In the spring of 1761 a public art exhibition was still a new thing in London. The first had been held only the year before, and the artists behind it had already fallen out over how to run the next one, so most of them staged their own show at Spring Gardens, near Charing Cross. Richard Wilson sent a View near Chester, and this large canvas is probably it. The spot is the Dee valley downstream from the village of Holt, with Wales on the left of the river and England on the right. Far off on the horizon stand the towers of Chester Cathedral and St John's Church. Wilson gives the English oaks in front the slender look of trees in the Roman landscapes of Claude, the 17th-century French painter, and the country people resting on the hill with their dog sit where Claude would have put shepherds.