This depiction of an English ruin along the River Wye is well-balanced: trees gracefully line either bank; in the left background, a cluster of clouds reaches across the river in a figure that reflects the extension of trees from the right bank; and the ruins sit slightly off-center in the middle ground. Such a composition, however, was probably not an exact copy of what William Gilpin saw, but rather an ideal composition and re-production of that scene. In his essay On Picturesque Beauty, Gilpin, the first proponent of the picturesque, articulates that the most harmonious scenes are constructed of natural elements or “ingredients” stored in the memory of the amateur artist (Three Essays 8). Consequently, this view of Wilton Castle is, most likely, derived from the reassemblage of those natural elements that surrounded the ruin.

The ruined abbey or castle is one of the chief features glorified by the picturesque. To quote Gilpin:

[T]he picturesque eye is perhaps most inquisitive after the elegant relics of ancient architecture; the ruined tower, the Gothic arch, the remains of castles, and abbeys. These are the richest legacies of art. They are consecrated by time; and almost deserve the veneration we pay to the works of nature itself. (Three Essays 46)

These edifices highlight the formal irregularity that is central to Gilpin’s notion of the genre, and are specifically expounded upon in his Eastern Tour: their asymmetrical, jagged, or pyramidal forms, whether present in the actual form of the object or created by the alterations of the artist, are preferred to regular, smooth, solid, or square forms (Gilpin: qtd. in Templeman 145). The arched openings and asymmetrical outline of Wilton Castle depicted here conform to such prescriptive designs and blend harmoniously into the full foliage of the surrounding woods.

As Kim Michasiw points out, Gilpin intended his aesthetic to be employed and applied by tourists (82-83). In his work, The British Tourists, William Fordyce Mavor gives a contemporary description of this burgeoning group, among them the Reverend Stebbing Shaw who was “captivated [by] all the variety of rural imagery” when he came upon the ruins of Wilton Castle (216). Ann Bermingham further notes that Gilpin emphasized the affordability of traveling in Great Britain as yet another reason to search locally for the picturesque (86), though the inaccessibility of the Continent during the 1790s (due to the French revolutionary conflicts) was already significantly contributing to the growth of domestic tourism in Britain (Andrews 34). Finally, Gilpin's use of watercolor associated the early stages of the picturesque with his target audience of tourists and amateur artists. Hardie’s survey of British watercolor painting explains that, prior to the nineteenth century, the Royal Academy considered watercolor a medium less worthy than oil until the establishment of the Old Water-Colour Society in 1804 and the success of their exhibitions (112-13). By employing watercolor, a medium without pretension, and by using a compositional technique dependent only on the readily available “ingredients” of nature, this idealized image of Wilton Castle could, theoretically, be recreated by any amateur artist.

In this image, the ideal arrangement of Wilton Castle and its surroundings exemplifies William Gilpin's mode of picturesque composition. This scene is depicted from the low perspective of a river. In the right foreground, two trees extend their branches over the river. A structure with arched openings sits on the opposite bank; this edifice and a cluster of trees compose the middle ground. The upper register features large cloud masses, and a dense forest in a lighter tone lines the background. The aquatints engraved for Gilpin’s Tours were based on sketches made by Gilpin himself. A comparison of similar aquatints from the second, third and fifth editions reveals subtle variations among them and suggest that new aquatint etchings were used in each printing.