Near Viareggio, Where Shelley's Body Was Found, 1876. Oil on canvas, 36 x 90 inches (91.5 x 228.8 cm). Collection of Manchester Art Gallery, accession no. 1924.63. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
In 1866, after the death of his first wife, Richmond travelled to Italy to recover from his grief and where he was to remain for four years. In February 1866, at the Caffe Greco in Rome, Richmand met Giovanni Costa through Frederic Leighton. Leighton told Richmond “Come, I must introduce you to Giovanni Costa, a real artist, a great artist…Leighton had told me that I should see a real artist, and that I should find a true friend and it was so” (Reynolds, Richmond, 42) The introduction was promptly followed by a visit to Costa’s studio at Via Margutta 33.
Both Costa and Leighton were to have a great influence on Richmond's later artistic style. Reynolds has described how
Costa took Richmond, and Leighton while he remained in Rome, on long sketching expeditions into the Campagna, teaching them to draw from nature. They would select the fleeting moment of the gloaming when the landscape is swept by an evening light of visionary intensity; or they would choose nature in turbulence, a gathering storm, the austerity of a windswept plain. Equally well, they could seek out an atmosphere of calm, ruins hidden away by an enveloping mist, the returning shepherd in the twilight. To the overall concept of the picture they would add carefully sketched details from nature, fitting in and rejecting as they worked up the final composition in their studios. [43]
Near Viareggio, Where Shelley's Body Was Found takes the form of a view of the Tuscan coastline with the Carrara Mountains in the distance. The painting was intended as a memorial to the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had drowned in 1822 off the Tuscan coast near the shore at Viareggio, which this painting depicts. The picture portrays a dark and sinister mood in keeping with its subject.
Links to Related Material
Bibliography
Reynolds, Simon. William Blake Richmond. An Artist’s Life 1842-1921. Norwich: Michael Russell Publishing Ltd., 1995.
Last modified 19 December 2022