Self-portrait of Richard Wilson, R.A.

Richard Wilson was one of the RA’s founding members and a committed landscape painter, despite the early Royal Academy not seeing much intellectual value in the genre – President Joshua Reynolds called it “the lower exercises of art” and the “humbler walks of the profession”. Born in Wales, Wilson elevated landscape painting to the higher echelons of British art after spending years in Italy and Venice studying their grand idealised scenes. He attracted many aristocratic patrons who wanted their estates painted in his sensitive, delicately lit style. He was also one of the first artists to turn his paintbrush to his native Welsh landscapes, which had largely been overlooked as bleak and undeserving of artistic attention. When he couldn’t make enough money from his art in later life, the Royal Academy gave him the job of librarian.