Suffused with golden light, this sultry afternoon landscape dates from circa 1790, the period of Wright’s late maturity. With its distinctive mountainous headland in the distance, the view can be identified as the old town of San Felice Circeo at the northern end of the Gulf of Gaeta. Known to the Romans as Circeii, the town is traditionally said to have been founded by Tarquinius Superbus, the legendary seventh and last King of Rome who ruled from 535 to 509 BC. From ancient times to the present day, it has been a perennially popular holiday destination for Rome’s citizens, and one Wright would have visited to escape the heat of the Eternal City.

Wright set sail for Italy in November 1773 with his pregnant wife Hannah, his pupil Richard Hurleston, the artist John Downman, and, for the last part of his journey, the architect James Paine junior. The party reached Nice in December and went on to Genoa and Leghorn, before travelling to Rome in February 1774, where Wright met George Romney, Ozias Humphry and Jacob More. In October and November he visited Naples, exploring Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as the wonders of the Amalfi coast, but was back in Rome by the end of the year, staying until June 1775. Prior to his Italian sojourn, landscape had played a relatively minor role in Wright’s artistic practice but, like so many before him, he succumbed to the charm of the southern light and the rugged beauty of the countryside. Writing to his brother in May 1774 he enthused about ‘the amazing and stupendous remains of antiquity’ and all the ‘fine things [Italy] abounds with... the artist finds here whatever may facilitate and improve his studies’ (quoted in J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800, New Haven and London 1997, pp. 1023-4). Very few of Wright’s Italian subjects were actually painted in Italy. Most, like the present landscape, were worked up when he returned to England from drawings or gouache sketches he made on the spot. The same view of San Felice Circeo had previously been used by Wright for a small oval, painted as a pair with a view of Lake Nemi in 1782 (Private collection, U.K.).