Two Famous 18th-Century Painters
One Celebrated by Venice Council & One Showed Beauties of Nature
Italian Giambattista Tiepolo was virtuoso of fresco painting & Welsh Richard Wilson was honored by John Constable as landscape painter with unique naturalistic style.
Which artist was named:
1. The most celebrated of the virtuosi (by the council of the Scuola del Carmine Art School in Venice)?
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), is the unchallenged master of Venetian painters of the 18th-century Rococo period and the last of the Renaissance painters. In the Venetian tradition he filled his paintings with exquisite luminous colors like lavenders, blues, greens, burgundies, and golds.
Tiepolo was recognized by his European contemporaries as the greatest painter of large-scale decorative frescoes in the 1700s and indeed was a virtuoso of the fresco medium. Fresco perfectly suited his style of painting in a “rapid and resolute” manner and gave his work a beautiful sense of immediacy. He painted walls and ceilings with large, expansive, tender scenes of mythology, allegory, poetry, religion, the gods, and the saints.
Tiepolo worked in the city of Venice, where the nobility and the clergy of Italy, Germany, and Spain clamored for his work, and where he was praised as “the most famous of the virtuosi.” In 1736, Count Tessin, who had to select a painter to decorate the royal palace in Stockholm, described Tiepolo this way because of his great imagination: “full of spirit, of infinite fire, of dazzling color, and astonishing speed.” This is an apt description of this painter.
Tiepolo embraced the artistic status quo, stating that painters should "please noble, rich people." Valuing the traditional skills of draftsmanship, realism, and classicism, this master aligned himself with traditions of western art still found vital and desirable.
Tiepolo’s most acclaimed work remains his frescoes, done for villas and churches in Venice, Madrid, and Germany. For a fee, companies will churn out “original” copies of Tiepolo’s work, like “The Empire of Flora,” originally created in 1743, which now hangs in California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, California, done by Classic Reproductions, or like “The Trinity Appearing to Saint Clement” (1730) recreated by Great Masters Gallery.
2. One of those appointed to show the world the hidden stores and beauties of nature (by John Constable)?
Richard Wilson
Wilson (1713-1782) was an 18th-century Welsh artist who drew and painted scenery and idealized classical landscapes.
He worked first in Venice, studying the works of Titian and other old masters and working as a portrait painter. Here he befriended Francesco Zuccarelli, a leading Venetian landscape painter, and upon his return to Britain he took his advice and concentrated on landscapes. He enjoyed considerable success until the early 1770s, but in his last years he was broke, his health ruined, and his reputation in decline.
William Hodges, a former pupil, published a short essay on Richard Wilson in 1790 that helped improve the image and status of Wilson’s work. Eventually his work influenced artists of J. M. W. Turner’s generation.
John Constable (1776-1837), a successful British landscape painter, observed in one of his lectures on art that Wilson deserved praise for opening the way to the appreciation of landscape painting in England and for developing a style of depicting nature that was entirely his own, stating that “…he looked at nature entirely for himself and remained free from any tincture of the styles that prevailed among living artists… he was almost wholly excluded from any share of the patronage which was liberally bestowed on his contemporaries.” Constable himself quietly rebelled against the current artistic culture that dictated that artists should use their imagination to compose their landscape paintings, preferring instead to draw from nature itself.
Sources:
Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.
Beckett, R.B. John Constable’s Discourses. Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1970.
Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2007.
