View of a Town

In the summer of 1798 Turner travelled through Wales, and part of the point was to see places tied to Richard Wilson, the Welsh-born landscape painter who had died 16 years before. Long afterwards Turner remembered those as the days of his youth when he was in search of Richard Wilson's birthplace, the village of Penegoes in mid Wales, where Wilson's father had been the parish clergyman. This little canvas, about a third of a metre across, comes out of the same enthusiasm. Tate describes it as an exercise in Wilson's manner, painted broadly in subdued colours, and probably never meant for sale. Turner singled Wilson out as the painter whose style was especially suited to the British landscape and character. The town itself has never been identified. Tate suggests the valley of the River Wye, or somewhere else in Wilson's native Wales.