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William Pars, 1742–1782, British, A View of Rome Taken from the Pincio, 1776

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Creator:

William Pars, 1742–1782

Title:

A View of Rome Taken from the Pincio

Date:

1776

Materials & Techniques:

Watercolor, pen and gray ink, graphite and black crayon on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream laid paper

Dimensions:

Mount: 17 15/16 x 24 1/8 inches (45.5 x 61.3 cm), Sheet: 15 1/16 x 21 1/8 inches (38.3 x 53.6 cm), Image: 15 1/16 x 21 1/8 inches (38.3 x 53.6 cm)

Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Inscribed on verso in graphite, upper right: "Cavallo at a distance."

Watermarked, center on back (when read correct way around), written vertically downwards: "J HONIG | & | ZOONEN"

Signed and dated in pen and black ink, lower left: "WPars, Rome 1776."

Credit Line:

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Copyright Status:

Public Domain

Accession Number:

B1977.14.4704

Classification:

Drawings & Watercolors

Collection:

Prints and Drawings

Subject Terms:

Associated Places:

Access:

Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details.

Link:

https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:14312

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According to Thomas Jones, Pars took advantage of the study grant offered by the Society of Dilettanti to escape England in the company of the wife of the miniaturist Samuel Smart, with whom he was having an affair. They arrived in Rome on 25 December 1775 and took lodgings near the Via del Babuino. His companion died of consumption in 1778; Pars died four years later as the result of having caught cold while sketching at Tivoli.
Pars’s watercolor, painted early in his stay in the city, shows the view from the Pincian Hill, not far from his lodgings, looking toward the church of Trinità dei Monti and the top of the Spanish Steps. Rising behind is the Palazzo del Quirinale, the papal summer residence. It was in the streets around the Piazza di Spagna that British artists and indeed many visiting artists from across northern Europe congregated. Pars masterfully gradates his watercolor tones not only to establish distance but to give an almost palpable sense of the heat and haze hanging over the city and the shimmer of sunlight on the tiled rooftops.

Scott Wilcox

Baskett, John, Jules David Prown, Duncan Robinson, Brian Allen, and William Reese. Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art. New Haven : Yale Center for British Art , 2007, cat. no. 49

In 1764 the Society of Dilettanti, an association of gentlemen formed to promote the appreciation of ancient art, commissioned the young classical scholar Richard Chandler to record the classical ruins of Asia Minor. William Pars, a twenty-two-year-old portrait painter, was chosen to accompany Chandler as draftsman. Pars's watercolors from the expedition were published by the Society in 1769 as illustrations to Chandler's account under the title Ionian Antiquities. The following year one of the Society's members, Lord Palmerston, asked Pars to accompany him on a tour of Switzerland. As part of Palmerston's entourage, Pars visited Rome for the first time.
In 1775 the Society of Dilettanti's first award to an artist for study in Rome Allowed Pars to return to the city. He lived there for the last seven years of his life, at the heart of a community pf visiting British watercolorists that included John "Warwick" Smith (cat. 74), Francis Towne (cat. 53), and Pars's watercolor of the view from the Pincian Hill, in which the heat and haze hanging over the city are almost palpable, shows the area around the Spanish steps where British artists in Rome congregated.

Scott Wilcox

Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001. pg. 121, cat. no. 100

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Line of Beauty : British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century (Yale Center for British Art, 2001-05-19 - 2001-08-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

English Landscape (Paul Mellon Collection) 1630-1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 1977-04-19 - 1977-07-17) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Baskett, English drawings and watercolors, 1550-1850, in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon , The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 1972, pp. 37-8, no. 50, NC228 B37+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 264, no. 49, pl. 49, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Hugh Belsey, Exhibition reviews : Paul Mellon's legacy : New Haven and London, Burlington Magazine, vol. 149, October 2007, p. 715, N1 .B87 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

British Art at Yale, Apollo, vol.105, April 1977, pp. 272-273, fig. 10, N1 .A54 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 2, no. 49, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Graham Reynolds, English Landscape 1630-1850, Apollo, vol.105, April 1977, pp. 272-273, fig. 10, N1 A54 105:2 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

The idea of Italy : photography and the British imagination, 1840-1900, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, p. 21, fig. 3, TR57 .I33 2022+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christopher White, English landscape, 1630-1850 : drawings, prints & books from the Paul Mellon Collection, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1977, pp. 33-4, no. 50, pl. VIII, NC228 W45 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Scott Wilcox, Line of beauty : British drawings and watercolors of the eighteenth century, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2001, p. 121, no. 100, NC228 W53 2001 (YCBA) [YCBA]

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