David Wilkie (artist)
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Sir David Wilkie RA (18 November 1785 – 1 June 1841) was a Scottish[1] painter, especially known for his genre scenes. He painted successfully in a wide variety of genres, including historical scenes, portraits, including formal royal ones, and scenes from his travels to Europe and the Middle East. His main base was in London, but he died and was buried at sea, off Gibraltar, returning from his first trip to the Middle East. He was sometimes known as the "people's painter".
He was
Early life
David Wilkie was born in
Among his pictures of this period might be mentioned a subject from
In 1804, Wilkie left the
Historical scenes
Wilkie now turned to historical scenes, and painted his Alfred in the Neatherd's Cottage, for the gallery illustrative of English history which was being formed by Alexander Davison. After its completion he returned to genre-painting, producing the Card-Players and the admirable picture of the Rent Day which was composed during recovery from a fever contracted in 1807 while on a visit to his native village. His next great work was the Ale-House Door, afterwards entitled The Village Festival (now in the
Honours
In November 1809 he was elected an associate of the
Travels on the Continent
In 1814 he executed the Letter of Introduction, one of the most delicately finished and perfect of his
The visit of King George IV to Scotland
In 1822 Wilkie visited
Three more years of foreign travel
In 1825 he sought relief in foreign travel: after visiting Paris, he went to Italy,[12] where, in Rome, he received the news of fresh disasters through the failure of his publishers. A residence at Toplitz and Carlsbad was tried in 1826, with little good result, and then Wilkie returned to Italy, to Venice and Florence. The summer of 1827 was spent in Geneva, where he had sufficiently recovered to paint his Princess Doria Washing the Pilgrims' Feet, a work which, like several small pictures executed in Rome, was strongly influenced by the Italian art by which the painter had been surrounded. In October he passed into Spain, whence he returned to Britain in June 1828.
It is impossible to overestimate the influence upon Wilkie's art of these three years of foreign travel. It amounts to nothing short of a complete change of style. Up to the period of his leaving Britain he had been mainly influenced by the Dutch genre-painters, whose technique he had carefully studied, whose works he frequently kept beside him in his studio for reference as he painted, and whose method he applied to the rendering of those scenes of English and Scottish life of which he was so close and faithful an observer.
Later years
In the works which Wilkie produced in his final period he exchanged the detailed handling, the delicate finish and the reticent hues of his earlier works for a style distinguished by breadth of touch, largeness of effect, richness of tone and full force of melting and powerful colour. His subjects, too, were no longer the homely things of the genre-painter: with his broader method he attempted the portrayal of scenes from history, suggested for the most part by the associations of his foreign travel. His change of style and change of subject were severely criticized at the time; to some extent he lost his hold upon the public, who regretted the familiar subjects and the interest and pathos of his earlier productions, and were less ready to follow him into the historic scenes towards which this final phase of his art sought to lead them. The popular verdict had in it a basis of truth: Wilkie was indeed greatest as a genre-painter. But on technical grounds his change of style was criticized with undue severity. While his later works are admittedly more frequently faulty in form and draftsmanship than those of his earlier period, some of them at least (The Bride at her Toilet, 1838, for instance) show a true gain and development in power of handling, and in mastery over complex and forcible colour harmonies. Most of Wilkie's foreign subjects – the Pifferari, Princess Doria, the Maid of Saragossa, the Spanish Podado, a Guerilla Council of War, the Guerilla Taking Leave of his Family and the Guerilla's Return to his Family – passed into the English royal collection; but the dramatic Two Spanish Monks of Toledo, also entitled the Confessor Confessing, became the property of the Marquess of Lansdowne.
On his return to the UK Wilkie completed the Reception of the King at the Entrance of Holyrood Palace – a curious example of a union of his earlier and later styles, a "mixture" which was very justly pronounced by Haydon to be "like oil and water". His Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of the Congregation had also been begun before he left for abroad; but it was painted throughout in the later style, and consequently presents a more satisfactory unity and harmony of treatment and handling. It was one of the most successful pictures of the artist's later period.
In the beginning of 1830 Wilkie was appointed to succeed
In the autumn of 1840 Wilkie resolved on a voyage to the East. Passing through the Netherlands and Germany, he reached Constantinople, where, while detained by the war in Syria, he painted a portrait of the young sultan. He then sailed for
Achievements
An elaborate Life of Sir David Wilkie, by
Legacy
Wilkie stood as godfather to the son of his fellow Academician William Collins. The boy was named after both men, and achieved fame as the novelist Wilkie Collins.
In fiction
A painting which might be a real Wilkie or only a copy (the question is only resolved in the latter half of the book) plays a role in the novel Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher.
See also
Notes
- ^ the Honourable Louisa Cathcart, daughter of Charles Cathcart, 9th Lord Cathcart
- ^ hanging in the Long Gallery of the Murray seat, Scone Palace, Scotland[8]
References
- ^ "Sir David Wilkie". Biography. National Galleries Scotland. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- A. Fullarton & Co.p. 641. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-7486-3084-4.
- ^ "Sir David Wilkie: The Letter of Introduction". National Galleries Scotland. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- ^ Day, Melvin N. "Chevalier, Caroline and Chevalier, Nicholas". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- ^ Pinnington, Edward (1900). "Chapter IV: Education in Art". Sir David Wilkie and the Scots School of Painters. Famous Scots Series. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier. p. 32. Retrieved 22 April 2023 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ a b "Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1270 to Present". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- ISBN 978-2067243095.
- ^ "Sir David Wilkie: The Abbotsford family". National Galleries Scotland. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- ^ "Abbotsford: The Home of Sir Walter Scott". Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- ^ "Records of the clan and name of Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus". National Library of Scotland. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
- Gentleman's Magazine. 1855. p. 539. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Wilkie, Sir David". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 644–645.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in theFurther reading
- Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 61. 1900. p. 253 ff. .
- RA., (Illustrated with twenty plates, etc.), London : Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1903, (Series: The makers of British art).
- Gower, Ronald Sutherland. Sir David Wilkie (London: G. Bell and sons, 1902)
- ISSN 0264-0856
- Pinnington, Edward, Sir David Wilkie and the Scots School of Painters, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1900, ("Famous Scots Series").
- Woodward, John (ed.). Paintings and drawings by Sir David Wilkie, R.A (1900).
External links
- Works in the National Galleries of Scotland
- Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections
- Portrait by W Bentley, R. A. in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835, David Wilkie.
- 132 artworks by or after David Wilkie at the Art UK site