View of Rome from near the Ponte Molle

Plimmer’s landscape—one of only a handful of known oil paintings by the artist—features the Ponte Molle in the left foreground with Rome in the distance. Plimmer’s painting can be compared to Wilson’s earlier Rome from the Ponte Molle, but stylistically, and in its inclusion of the group of dancing figures in the foreground, it is also clearly inspired by the example of Claude Lorrain. Indeed, in June 1759, Plimmer wrote to his patron Henry Hoare: “I have endeavoured to imitate Claude and Nature with as much care as I possibly could ever since Mr. Wilson left Rome and I have been my own master.” Plimmer’s death in Italy the following year, at the age of thirty-eight, was reported by his friend Thomas Jenkins on November 19, 1760.