George Augustus Wallis

[4] He trained in the environment of neoclassical German artists, first in Naples, where he met Philipp Hackert, then in Rome, where around 1794 he frequented Asmus Jacob Carstens, Gottlieb Schick[5] and especially Joseph Anton Koch.

The work, The castle of Heidelberg (1812, private collection) is strongly influenced by the German canons and makes Wallis a pioneer of the romantic landscape.

Examples of this are the numerous drawings and watercolours, many of which are undated, preserved in the Thorvaldsen Museum, in Copenhagen, as well as several letters, due to the close relationship between the English painter and the Danish sculptor.

[9] From 1817 Wallis exhibited continuously at the Academy of Florence, his city of choice (from which he moved away only for a period between 1820 and 1829), imposing his particular kind of view where the influences of the protoromanticism of Salvator Rosa were grafted on the canonical schemes proposed by Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet.

He had a son, Trajan, also a painter, who in 1819 executed "The Martyrdom of Santa Cristina", currently in Florence, in the Church of Santi Vito e Modesto in Bellosguardo.