Aquae Albulae, near Tivoli

Aquae Albulae near Tivoli at the Ashmolean depicts the ancient Roman sulphur springs east of Rome, known since antiquity for their therapeutic properties. The site, near Hadrian’s Villa, was part of the rich landscape of classical ruins and natural wonders around Tivoli that attracted Wilson and countless other artists during the Grand Tour era. Richard Wilson's Italian landscapes were the foundation on which his entire career was built. The years he spent in Rome in the 1750s, studying the work of Claude Lorrain and Gaspar Dughet in the landscape of the Roman campagna that had inspired them, gave him the compositional intelligence and tonal discipline that distinguished his mature work from the topographical painting that preceded him in British art. His Italian subjects — the Alban Hills, the volcanic lakes, the ruins of the campagna — were produced both for the British tourists who wanted souvenirs of their Grand Tour and for the collector market in London that was learning to value landscape painting as a serious genre.

The milky waters of the sulphur springs create unusual color effects that Wilson captures with distinctive pale blue-green tones. The surrounding landscape is rendered with characteristic atmospheric sensitivity.