Artists from all over Europe flocked to Italy in the eighteenth century. It was a place of breathtaking natural wonders, and a place to study antiquity and the great art of the Renaissance. When the Welsh artist Thomas Jones set out in 1776, Italy was the centre of a pioneering movement – the tradition of the landscape oil sketch. During his three year stay, Jones made a distinctive and deeply original contribution to this tradition. At the start of his second stay in Naples, from May 1780 until August 1783, Jones found lodgings with a roof terrace in a house near the harbour. From this vantage-point he made a series of highly finished oil studies of neighbouring buildings which have a remarkable freshness and immediacy. Away from the grand palaces and popular Italian sights, Thomas Jones delighted in humbler subjects - crumbling walls, lines of washing, shuttered windows. These were not the usual subjects of an eighteenth century artist. This minutely-detailed sketch was painted from the roof of his house in Naples. With its dusty blue and silver grey tones and unusual cropping technique, it looks refreshingly modern.
