During periods of enforced leisure Wyld used the free time to draw and paint with his friend right across France, from Dieppe to Rouen and meeting Horace Vernet, then at the height of his fame.

Wyld was about to leave the country when he learned that Vernet was on board a warship anchored in the bay of Algiers en route to Rome to take up his new post as director of the Académie de France – the two men had only seen each other once in 6 years.

Admiring Michelangelo and Raphael, after 6 months in Rome Wyld decided to make a tour of the whole of Italy on foot with a companion (apparently Émile-Aubert Lessore).

On 1 January 1834, they crossed the Simplon Pass in a cart during a snowstorm and he then set up his studio in Paris, where he was commissioned to produce paintings of orientalist scenes and Venetian architecture.

After the 1848 Revolution he returned to the United Kingdom where he specialized in orientalist subjects, became a member of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours and had a major success with the businessmen of Manchester, making paintings crammed full of detail for them.

In 1851 his admirer Queen Victoria commissioned paintings of Liverpool and Manchester to celebrate her visit there, which remain in the Royal Collection along with examples of his orientalist works.

He was invited to the festivities for Queen Victoria's visit to France in 1855 (the first by a British head of state since 1520), at which he produced a monumental view of château de Saint-Cloud.