Presented in a period hand-carved gilt wood frame

Oil on panel, 25 by 14.5 cm

Mason left England for Rome in 1843 with little artistic training and established a reputation for creating poetic and idylic depictions of the Roman Campagna. The present work, a study for one such composition, is probably dateable to the late 1840s or early 1850s when Mason was executing his most distinctive work. One of these paintings, Italian Landscape, is in the collection of the Tate (inv.no.2970). Mason was a close friend and admirer of Frederic, Lord Leighton and is strongly associated with the Etruscan School of artists, although the movement itself was not formed until some time after Mason's death.