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| John Robert Cozens Cavern in the Campagna, Rome 1778 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum |
"This is one of the most original watercolors of the 18th century. It is very different from the usual scenes of the sunny Italian countryside. Here, John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) explores the darkness and danger of the cave. 'The Sublime' was an 18th-century aesthetic concept. It centred around the notion of awe-inspiring intensity. It was also an important subject of debate."
– curator's notes from the Victoria & Albert Museum
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| John Robert Cozens The Campagna, Rome before 1797 watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Busiri 'Tomb of Nero' on the via Cassia outside Rome ca. 1720-50 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Giovanni Battista Busiri 'Tomb of Nero' in the Roman Campagna ca. 1720-50 drawing British Museum |
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| Richard Cooper the Younger View of the Campagna of Rome 1778 etching, aquatint Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna ca. 1782-85 oil on paper National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
"Valenciennes holds a position of considerable importance in the history of landscape painting of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. In 1800 he published the influential treatise on landscape painting, Élémens de perspective pratique à l'usage des artistes, suivis de Réflexions et conseils à un élève sur la peinture et particulièrement sur le genre de paysage (which was still read by Camille Pissarro in the 1860s). In this book, Valenciennes recommended an almost systematic program of study by painting oil sketches out-of-doors, the better for the young artist to understand nature's myriad appearances and to train his hand and eye in capturing them in paint. This theory was based on Valenciennes' own practice: since the 1780s he had been painting a variety of oil studies in the open air, including a notable series executed during a period of study in Rome between 1782 and 1785, most of which are now in the Louvre, Paris. Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna is related in style and subject to several oil sketches from that series. The artist adopted an elevated site, with just a suggestion of the brown rolling slopes of the Roman countryside indicated along the bottom of the image. His true subject is the blue sky above, streaked with silvery white clouds. The sketch was painted rapidly, with a delicately applied and lively impasto that captures the changing cloud formations. Valenciennes' observation was exact and scientific, yet at the same time highly poetic in spirit. . . . These sketches were not made for sale or exhibition, but for purposes of study, as part of the long process that would lead to the creation in the artist's studio of more finished exhibition pictures. Valenciennes also employed them to teach his students how to paint rapidly, and how to select and simplify the complex forms of nature into the limited pictorial compass of a few square inches. Although such works were not normally sold during the artist's lifetime, they were sometimes exchanged among painters and were often acquired by fellow artists in estate sales of studio effects."
– from text by Philip Conisbee, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000
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| Richard Wilson Roman Campagna with Figures 1756 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Richard Wilson Classical Landscape with Venus and Adonis ca. 1754-55 oil on canvas Victoria & Albert Museum |
"The subject is taken from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, which was a favourite source for Wilson in his later years. It shows the artist at the height of his powers, reinterpreting the classical landscape of Claude Lorrain in seventeenth-century Italy for a late eighteenth-century British audience. The ruined building appears in other compositions by Wilson, and is recorded in his 1752 Italian sketchbook. It has been identified as an ancient tomb known as the Sedia di Diavolo in the Roman Campagna, and may refer to the tragically early death of Adonis."
– curator's notes from the Victoria & Albert Museum
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| Richard Wilson Tivoli - Temple of the Sibyl and the Campagna ca. 1765-70 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"This is one of several versions of the same subject painted by Wilson in the years following his return from Italy in 1756 or 1757. Wilson referred to compositions such as the present one, which he repeated over and over again, as 'good breeders' – indicating their popularity and commercial success. The present picture, in common with other known versions, depicts a view across the gorge of the river Aniene (or Anio) to the Roman Campagna, or plain, and the distant city of Rome to the south-west. Although Wilson was guided by the splendour of the natural scenery in composing his various paintings of Tivoli and the Temple of the Sibyl, his carefully planned compositions also relied upon the classical landscape paintings made a century earlier by Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet."
– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery
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| Francis Towne In the Campagna, Rome, looking towards the Sabine Mountains ca. 1786 watercolor Tate Gallery |
"This watercolour is based on a coloured sketch of the same view, now in the British Museum. The sketch is inscribed, "No. 5.2 Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia from 10 o Clock till 1 o clock" and dated 26 October 1780. The countryside to the north-east of Rome was popular during this period with artists keen to escape the bustle of city life. Known as the Roman Campagna, it was also a favourite sketching ground of the celebrated seventeenth-century painter Claude Lorrain."
– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery
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| John Laporte View of Tivoli and the Roman Campagna 1790 watercolour, bodycolour British Museum |
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| Alexander Runciman Campagna Landscape before 1785 wash drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Jens Petersen Lund Landscape of the Italian Campagna 1780 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Joseph Anton Koch The Roman Campagna with an Ancient Fountain ca. 1795-1805 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |