Description
The Victorian Scottish artist, George Wilson, died in 1890 at the early age of 41, just at the time when he was, inevitably, approaching the height of his artistic career. He was a strict adherent to the original Pre-Raphaelite ethos and principles long after these had been abandoned by most ‘followers’ for more commercial interests.
Frequently described as a ‘born painter’, George Wilson was a true ‘artist’s artist’ who painted purely because he loved to paint – almost entirely from nature, which he loved equally with the romantic poets and the classics. He interpreted the works of the latter in a small number of surviving allegorical oil paintings; but undoubtedly his greatest love was to paint, quite exquisitely in watercolour, the woodland landscapes of his beloved native Scotland and northern Italy. He thus led a somewhat nomadic life, coming and going as the mood took him. He shunned all publicity; he exhibited and sold his work only very infrequently, and he never, ever, considered signing his work.
Although Percy Bate included George Wilson together with Simeon Solomon and Frederick Sandys in the chapter entitled The Romantic Influence in his book, The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters, Their Associates and Successors, his immediately post-contemporary and benchmark commentary on the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Wilson has been virtually forgotten ever since.
Coinciding with the publication of Bate’s book in 1903, George Wilson was heralded through a retrospective exhibition at the John Baillie Gallery in London as being first amongst the ‘Neglected Artists’ of the era. More recently, he has been described as the last of the lost and forgotten Pre-Raphaelites, and because of the scarcity of his work and any greater information about his life, most modern day writers view him as a long lost enigma. However, most would equally agree that he was an important, if illusive, figure in Victorian painting, and that a full study of his work is well overdue. This has now been achieved so far as is presently practicable.
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