Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/126

 flight of Richard Hilliard, Tunstall's chaplain, to Scotland, and for ‘relieving certain traitorous persons which denied the king's supremacy’ (, Chron. 1548, p. 838). On 4 June he wrote an entreaty to Cromwell to intercede for him (Letters and Papers, 747), but he remained in the Tower until 1541, when, although excepted from the general pardon of the previous year, he was released by the king (ib. xvi. 578;, p. 841). On 20 July 1542 he was collated to the prebend of Bilton in York Cathedral, and on 14 Dec. to that of Hoxton in St. Paul's. He died before 8 June 1548, his will being proved in the same year (P. C. C. 14 Populwell). He wrote a prefatory epistle, dated 1 Jan. 1521, to a sermon preached by Fisher on the burning of Luther's books, which was printed in the Latin edition of Fisher's ‘Works,’ published at Würzburg in 1597. He was also the author of a book printed at Paris before 1535 against Henry's divorce (Letters and Papers, viii. 859). Several manuscript treatises by him of a theological nature are preserved in the record office, and were probably seized at the time of his first arrest (ib. viii. 152, vol. ix. index, s.v. ‘Wilson’). John Leland has some lines to Wilson in his ‘Encomia’ (1589, p. 51).

[Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 94; Tanner's Biblioth. Brit.-Hib.; Le Neve's Fasti Eccles. Angl. ed Hardy; Baker's Hist. of St. John's Coll. Cambr. ed. Mayor, i. 79, 110–12, 361; Newcourt's Repert. Eccles. Londin. 1710 i. 164, 419, ii. 582; Works of Hugh Latimer (Parker Soc.), ii. 365; Bale's Select Works (Parker Soc.), p. 510; Hennessy's Novum Repert. Londin. 1897; Foxe's Actes and Monuments. ed. Townsend, v. 430, 599, vii. 455, 476, 490, 505, 775; Fiddes's Life of Wolsey, 1724, pp. 198, 203; Zürich Letters (Parker Soc.), 1846, pp. 208, 211; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, 1865; Hutchins's Dorset, 1868, iii. 188, 190; Demaus's Life of Latimer, 1881, p. 135.] 

WILSON, RICHARD (1714–1782), landscape-painter, was born at Penegoes in Montgomeryshire, of which his father held the living, on 1 Aug. 1714. His mother was one of the Wynnes of Leeswold. His father was collated to Mold after Wilson's birth, and gave his son, who does not seem to have gone to school, an excellent classical education. With the assistance of Sir George Wynne, Wilson was sent to London in 1729, and placed with Thomas Wright, a portrait-painter, of whom little is known. Wilson began his artistic career as a portrait-painter, and attained some position in that branch of the profession. A portrait by him of John Hamilton Mortimer was valued by John Britton [q. v.] at 150 guineas in 1842. There are several portraits by him at the Garrick Club, and he painted (about 1748) a group of the young Prince of Wales (George III), his brother Edward Augustus, duke of York, and their tutor Dr. Ayscough. This picture is now in the National Portrait Gallery (London), as well as another of the two princes by themselves, evidently taken for or from the larger picture. In 1749 Wilson went to Italy, and there he painted a landscape which excited the admiration of Francesco Zuccarelli [q. v.], who advised him to take to landscape-painting. This was at Venice, and either there or at Rome Horace Vernet encouraged him to do the same. The French painter also exchanged landscapes with him and showed Wilson's in his own studio with generous praise to all comers. Wilson soon gained a considerable reputation in Italy as a landscape-painter, and Raphael Mengs painted his portrait in exchange for one of his landscapes. When at Venice he made the acquaintance of William Locke of Norbury [q. v.] (the patron of George Barret the elder [q. v.], Wilson's rival), for whom he painted some sketches and landscapes. Wilson was six years in Italy (principally at Rome) painting and giving lessons. He seems to have mixed with the best society. In 1754 he sketched Mæcenas Villa in company with the Earls of Pembroke, Thanet, and Essex, and Viscount Bolingbroke. He travelled from Rome to Naples with Lord Dartmouth, for whom he painted some landscapes, and reached England again in 1756. His reputation had preceded him to England, and his return excited much interest among his brother artists, but it is said that his merit was not at once appreciated even by them. Paul Sandby [q. v.] is noted as an exception. He recommended Wilson to the Duke of Cumberland, for whom Wilson painted his celebrated picture of ‘Niobe,’ which was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1760, and engraved by Woollett in 1761. Wilson painted the subject three times: his earliest painting of it belonged to Sir George Beaumont, and was engraved by S. Smith (figures by William Sharp), and is now in the National Gallery; another was bought by the Marquis of Stafford. His picture of a ‘View of Rome from the Villa Madama’ (exhibited 1765) was bought by the Marquis of Tavistock. These and other works brought him the reputation of the greatest landscape-painter of the day, but his fame gained him scanty employment.

Between 1760 and 1768 Wilson exhibited over thirty pictures at the Society of British