Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wilson, Charles Heath
WILSON, CHARLES HEATH (1809–1882), art teacher and author, eldest son of Andrew Wilson (1780–1848) [q. v.], the landscape-painter, was born in London in September 1809. He studied art under his father, and in 1826 accompanied him to Italy. After seven years, he returned to Edinburgh, where he practised as an architect, and was for some time teacher of ornament and design in the school of art. His pictorial work was principally landscape in watercolour, but he also etched a number of book illustrations, of which the more important are in Pifferi's ‘Viaggio Antiquario’ (Roma, 1832), and James Wilson's ‘Voyage round the Coasts of Scotland’ (Edinburgh, 1842). In 1835 he was elected A.R.S.A., but resigned in 1858. While in Edinburgh he wrote and published, in collaboration with William Dyce [q. v.], a pamphlet (addressed to Lord Meadowbank) upon ‘The Best Means of ameliorating the Arts and Manufactures of Scotland,’ which attracted much attention. A copy in the British Museum is annotated by Wilson himself. Shortly afterwards Dyce was made director and secretary of the recently established schools of art at Somerset House, but resigned in 1843; and Wilson, who had meanwhile been director of the Edinburgh school, was appointed his successor. His position there was not much more comfortable than Dyce's had been, and in 1848 he also resigned, but the following year accepted the headmastership of the new Glasgow school of design. In 1840 he had visited the continent to make a report to government on fresco-painting, and while in Glasgow he was occupied for nearly ten years under the board of trade in superintending the filling of the windows of Glasgow Cathedral with Munich pictures in coloured glass. He selected the subjects and wrote a description of the work (prefaced by some account of the process), which went through many editions. In 1864 the board of trade masterships were suppressed and Wilson was pensioned, but continued to live in Glasgow for some years longer, doing architectural work. In 1869 he and his family finally left Scotland and settled at Florence, where he became the life and centre of a large literary and artistic circle. Much interested in Italian art, on which he wrote occasionally, and particularly in Michael Angelo, of whom he published a life (London and Florence, 1876; 2nd edit. London, 1881), which, begun as a compilation from Gotti, developed into a quite independent work, ‘enriched with not a few ingenious criticisms,’ he had, for these and other services, the cross of the ‘Corona d'Italia’ conferred upon him by Victor Emmanuel. He died at Florence on 3 July 1882.
He was twice married: first, on 3 Oct. 1838, in Edinburgh, to Louisa Orr, daughter of Surgeon John Orr, E.I.C., with issue one son and two daughters; and, secondly, on 16 Aug. 1848, also in Edinburgh, to Johanna Catherine, daughter of William John Thomson, portrait-painter, issue a son and a daughter. A portrait of Wilson, as a young man, by Sir John Watson Gordon, is in the possession of his son, C. A. Wilson.
[Redgraves' Century of Painters, 1866; Times, 17 July 1882; Academy, 22 July 1882; Athenæum, 15 July and 19 Aug. 1882; information from C. A. Wilson, esq., Genoa.]