Wilson, Richard

Wilson, Richard, 1713?–1782, British landscape painter, b. Wales. He studied in London and achieved success as a portrait painter, but after a visit to Italy (c.1750–1756) he devoted himself to landscape in the classical tradition of Claude Lorrain. The exhibition of Wilson's Niobe in 1760 won him acclaim, and he was made a member and later librarian of the Royal Academy. His work did not become generally popular until after his death. Although his Italian landscapes did not depart from the classical tradition of picturesque Roman ruins and recumbent nymphs, his work shows considerable originality and breadth of treatment, especially in his many fine paintings of English country houses. He exerted a strong influence on subsequent landscape painting in England. On Hounslow Heath (National Gall., London) and Afternoon and Lake Nemi (both: Metropolitan Mus.) are well-known examples of his work.

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Wilson, Richard

(born Aug. 1, 1714, Penegoes, Montgomeryshire, Wales—died May 15, 1782, Llanberis, Carnarvonshire) Welsh landscape painter. He worked as a portraitist for many years, but after a lengthy stay in Italy (1750–57) he worked almost exclusively in landscape, except for numerous drawings of Roman sites and buildings that he used in composing Italianate landscapes. A set of drawings made for Lord Dartmouth (dated 1754) show that he tempered his delicate observation of light and distance with the discipline of such 17th-century Classicists as Nicolas Poussin. The landscapes he produced after his return to Britain influenced J.M.W. Turner and John Constable.

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Wilson, Richard (1926–  ) physicist; born in London, England. He came to the U.S.A. in 1950 to be a research associate at Rochester (1950–51) and Stanford (1951–52) while concurrently teaching at Christ Church, Oxford (1948–53). He joined Harvard in 1955. A specialist in both elementary particles and environmental physics, he was an outspoken advocate of the need for atomic power.