Richard Wilson, Holt Bridge on the River Dee

This is one of a pair of paintings depicting views of the valley of the River Dee from opposite viewpoints near the village of Holt in Cheshire. The other is The Valley of the Dee with Chester in the Distance. They are landscapes painted in the spirit of the French neoclassical landscape painter, Claude, who depicted views of the countryside outside Rome, rather than accurate depictions of real views in Cheshire. The foreground is invented, and the general character of the scene has been changed.

The view is of Holt Bridge, spanning the River Dee, at the point where the river serves as a border between Wales and England. The fourteenth-century Holt Bridge still survives, although its gatehouse, part ruined in Wilson’s day, has since crumbled. The small village of Holt is on the left of the picture, in the Welsh country of Denbighshire; the larger village of Farndon, in the English county of Cheshire, is on the right. Wilson has set the square tower of Farndon’s church on top of cliffs, but these are in fact sandstone rocks, and Wilson has exaggerated their height. By doing this, he has given the church a dramatic position like the ruined tower on a cliff in his The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA). He had exhibited this scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses two years earlier, in 1760, and it was arguably the key picture of his career.

Three figures are grouped in the foreground in the shade of a graceful tree. A young man plays a flute, while a reclining woman shades her eyes and gazes up towards the sun; the youth beside her looks in the same direction. Whatever they are looking at is outside the picture space, so it is impossible for us to know what has caught their attention. The head of another man appears behind them over the brow of the hill. He carries a long pole or perhaps a sword over his shoulder. It is not clear who he is in relation to the other figures. Maybe he is the herdsman for the flock of sheep below.

Wilson made a preliminary chalk drawing of the scene now in Birmingham City Art Gallery, which is closely followed in the painting. However the figures in the drawing are a woman and a child, who appears to be gathering firewood. Wilson decided to replace them in the oil painting with the more poetic and mysterious group who are making music – often in art a euphemism for lovemaking – and are dazzled by the sun.

The painting was probably exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1762.