A Welsh painter in Italy

The landscape painter Thomas Jones (1742–1803) was one of the most forward-looking of the British artists who cut their teeth in Italy in the last decades of the 18th century. Huon Mallalieu considers his career

- Huon Mallalieu

ON the night of June 8, 1778, the wife of the English landscape painter William Pars was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, having died of consumption two days earlier.

‘All the English artists who were then in Rome walked in procession with torches, to the number of 18 or 20. Banks the Sculptor read the Service, and great numbers of Romans attended, who behaved with the greatest Decorum, and a profound Silence was observed.

The Scene was grand and striking. The Moon, just hid behind the Tomb of Caio Sesto, cast her Silvery Tints on all the Objects around, save where that large and dark Piramid thrust its broad Shadow over the Place where the Solemn Ceremony was performing by the dusky Light of Torches…’ It was thus recorded, with a true artist’s eye for telling detail, by the Pars’s great friend, Thomas Jones.

From the 1770s to the 1780s, it was essential for any ambitious northern European artist to spend some time in Italy, particularly Rome and Naples. The country served as an international university, where British, German, French, Swiss and Scandinavian painters and sculptors socialised and worked with each other and their Italian counterparts to the considerable benefit of all. Lasting friendships—and, no doubt, some enmities—were made, stimulating national schools for decades thereafter.