David Wilkie

“ WILKIE. A FAMOUS Scotchman, David Wilkie, and his very distinguished friend and fellow-countryman, Andrew Geddes, wrought, each of them, in the middle period of Turne life, a certain number of etchings of independent merit. Those of Sir David Wilkie, which were but few, happen to be the best known, because Wilkie, much more than Geddes, was a leader of painting. But, meritorious as are the etchings of Wilkie, in their faithful record of character and picturesque effect, they are seldom as admirable as the prints of his less eminent brother. They have, generally, not so much freedom ”

“ David Wilkie, born in Scotland, at Cults in Fifeshire, November 18, 1785, came to London in 1805 to enter the Royal Academy schools, after some preliminary training at Edinburgh. His first picture, in the exhibition of 1806, "The Village Politicians," attracted attention, and was followed the next year by "The Blind Fiddler." The work of a youth of twenty-two, it is remarkable for its close observation of character and the skilful use made of what may be termed the theatrical faculty of grouping the personages so that their action tells the story. ”

“ Flaxman called for classic taste to appreciate him; and the fame of English art would have suffered both at home and abroad if a simple, manly lad had not quitted a Scotch manse and sailed from Leith to London, bringing with him indelible memories of the humour and the pathos of peasant life, and reproducing them with such graphic fidelity, power, and tenderness that the whole world has heard of David Wilkie. ”

“ The fact is, Sir David Wilkie's pictures show that he did carry this practice too far—for there is scarcely a picture of his that does not show patches of imitations, that are not always congruous with each other; there is too often in one piece, a bit of Rembrandt, a bit of Velasquez, a bit of Ostade, or others. The most perfect, as a whole, is his "Chelsea Pensioners." We do not quite understand the brew of study fermenting an accumulation of knowledge, and imagination exalting it. "An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination;" ”

“ On the birth of his first son, at the beginning of 1824, William Collins, [3] the great artist, requested Sir David Wilkie to become one of the sponsors for his child. [4] The painter's first criticism on his future godson is worth recording from its simplicity. Sir David, whose studies of human nature extended to everything but infant human nature, had evidently been refreshing his faculties for the occasion, by taxing his boyish recollections of puppies and [Pg 4] kittens ”

“ His different styles have each their advocates; but it is probable that the best examples of his earlier period will longest retain their popularity. His works have been sympathetically engraved by Burnet, Raimbach, Sharpe, and others.
There is a portrait of Wilkie, by himself, at twenty-nine, in the National Portrait Gallery of London. Another, which represents him in 1840, aged 55, was exhibited at the Guelph Exhibition of 1891 by Colonel David Wilkie. There are two portraits in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery—one by Sir William Beechey, bequeathed by Dr. ”

“ Wilkie takes no side but that of our common nature, and does justice to the bailiff as well as to the distressed family. We have here no hysterical passions—no shaking of fists against the heavens, and sending up thither mingled blasphemy and prayer, as some melodramatic genius might have done. Let them remark the stillness of the great sufferers, and how you know what they have come through—the consummate art in arranging the parts of the subject—its simplicity at first—its fulness afterwards when looked into—more in it than meets the eye. Mind must be exercised upon it to bring out its mind. ”

“ It is a great mistake to consider Wilkie as a comic painter, in which light he is generally regarded by the public on both sides of the Atlantic. When they are standing before his pictures, they seem to feel themselves bound to be moved to laughter by them, as they would by a comedy or a farce ”

“ No one thinks, for instance, of denying the merit of Teniers in his particular style of art, and no one consequently thinks of envying him. The merit of Wilkie, on the contrary, was at first strongly contested, and there were other painters set up in opposition to him, till now that he has become a sort of classic in his way, he has ceased to be an object of envy or dislike, because no one doubts his real excellence, as far as it goes. He has no more than justice done him, and the mind never revolts at justice. ”

“ Wilkie’s pictures, generally speaking, derive almost their whole value from their reality, or the truth of the representation. They are works of pure imitative art; and the test of this style of composition is to represent nature faithfully and happily in its simplest combinations. It may be said of an artist like Mr. Wilkie, that nothing human is indifferent to him. His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to, the most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He professedly gives character, thought, and passion, in their lowest degrees, and in their every-day forms. ”

“ The man who could paint so as to suggest all this, is a great man and a great painter.
Wilkie has, in like manner, been often misunderstood and misplaced. He is not of the Dutch school,—he is not a mere joker upon canvas,—he can move other things besides laughter; and he rises with the unconscious ease of greatness to what ever height he chooses. Look at John Knox's head in "The Administering the Sacrament in Calder House." Was the eye of faith ever so expressed, the seeing things that are invisible? ”

“ Wilkie, whose style of composition most nearly resembles Hogarth's, and with whom, therefore, he is to be compared, while he preserves all the force of individual character and delineation of living nature, has extended a far more comprehensive grasp of mind over the moralities of his subject. He has brought within the pencil's magic sway, and fixed there in permanent reality, the sorrows and the joys, the hopes, fears, and attachments, the occupations, customs, habits, and even amusements, of a whole unchanging class of mankind. ”

“ John Wilkie was the son of Scotch parents residing in Toronto, Ontario. He was possessed of considerable literary ability, and when a lad had entered Toronto University with the intention of pursuing a professional career; but his father shrewdly reasoned that, although fame might be acquired more readily by clergymen and lawyers, money was an important consideration, and might be acquired with, comparative ease in a well managed business. ”

“ I'm jest goin' to step out of the room a second. I'll leave the door open."
She ran out of the house to the barn; his cry followed her. There stood the old sulky which she and David had laughed at on the night of their arrival. She took hold of the shafts and pulled it out through the wide doors into the green yard. It was light, and she did it easily enough. She was very strong.
"I can do it," she said, with a nod of her head.
She dragged the sulky along into the road and stopped close to the front door.
Then she ran in, laughing. "Come, Davy, darlin', you're goin' to ride! ”

“ She drew the sulky into the yard of a large white house, the first which she came to, and knocked on the door.
"Can you—tell me—where—the doctor lives?" she asked the man who opened it.
She was leaning against the house, panting; her face was almost purple.
The man stood staring. He was old and large, with a sunburnt face and white hair.
"What in creation," said he at last, "does this mean? Who air ye, anyway? What ails him?" pointing at David lying back with deathly face, in the sulky. ”

“ You will remember my name, won’t you? John Wilkie. I am pleased to have met you. Is my umbrella behind you?” he added, stretching across. “No; I beg your pardon. Here it is in the corner;” and with an affable smile, the ex-cracksman stepped out, bowed, and disappeared among the crowd upon the platform.
I lit another cigar, laughed as I thought of my late companion, and lifted up the “Times,” which he had left behind him. ”

“ Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,
Sunday, June 13th, 1867.
My dear Wills,
I have read the first three numbers of Wilkie's story this morning, and have gone minutely through the plot of the rest to the last line. It gives a series of "narratives," but it is a very curious story, wild, and yet domestic, with excellent character in it, and great mystery. It is prepared with extraordinary care, and has every chance of being a hit. It is in many respects much better than anything he has done. The question is, how shall we fill up the blank between Mabel's progress and Wilkie? ”

“ Wilkie was unmarried. In character he was modest, frugal, and ceremonious, but extremely lovable and highly esteemed by many friends. He began life almost instinctively as a genre painter of the Dutch school; he developed in later life into a history and portrait painter, whose work was largely influenced by his study of art in Italy and Spain. ”

“ He speaks of Wilkie attracting the attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student to study the great book of nature, without being biassed by what has been done by other painters; it is as absurd as if they would recommend a youth to learn astronomy by lying in the fields, and looking on the stars, without reference to the works of Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or of Newton." ”

“ So long as he kept from historical painting, art meant for him the same thing as the portrayal of domestic life. Painting, he said, had no other aim than to reproduce nature and to seek truth. Undoubtedly this must be applied to Wilkie himself with considerable limitation. Wilkie painted simple fragments of nature just as little as Hogarth; he invented scenes. Nor was 80 he even gifted with much power of invention. But he had a fund of innocent humour, although there were times when it was in danger of becoming much too childlike. ”

“ He simply went along through life looking at the snow or the flowers which happened to be in sight, and thinking nothing about the fire or the gold underneath them.
That night they used their heap of hay for a bed; they slept soundly on it, too. The next morning they ate more sweet apples and crackers; then David started for Bassets, a little town three miles distant, in search of work. A man in Waterbury had told him that there was a tub factory in Bassets, and he thought of it now as a forlorn hope. ”

“ Rarely did Mr. Wilkins use that word, and never, never in the presence of a lady or a client. While as for the towel—why had he come? Why had he not stayed in Hampstead? It would be impossible to live this down.
But Mr. Wilkins was reckoning without Scrap. She, indeed, screwed up her face at the first flash of him on her astonished sight in an enormous effort not to laugh, and having choked the laughter down and got her face serious again, she said as composedly as if he had had all his clothes on, “How do you do.”
What perfect tact. Mr. Wilkins could have worshipped her. ”

“ His peasantry know nothing of social problems; free from want and drudgery, they merely spend their time over trifles and amuse themselves—themselves and the frequenters of the exhibition, for whom they are taking part in a comedy on canvas. If Hogarth had a biting, sarcastic, scourging, and disintegrating genius, Wilkie is one of those people who cause one no lasting excitement, but are always satisfied to be humorous, and laugh with a contented appreciation over their own jokes. ”

“ WILKIE’S SIMPLICITY. Never, relates Haydon, was anything more extraordinary than the modesty and simplicity of Wilkie, at the period of his production of “The Village Politicians.” Jackson told me he had the greatest difficulty to persuade him to send this celebrated picture to the Exhibition; and I remember his (Wilkie’s) bewildered astonishment at the prodigious enthusiasm of the people at the Exhibition when it went, May, 1806. On the Sunday after the private day and dinner, the News said:—“A young Scotchman, by name Wilkie, has a wonderful work.” ”

“ They were young and strong, and walking was a pleasure. It was enough sight better than being cooped up in the shop, David said, looking ahead between the green, dewy boughs. And Minty said she was glad not to be in the house washing dishes such a splendid morning.
She even began to sing as they went along, a Sunday- school tune. The Saundersville folk sang that kind of music principally. Mr. Saunders kept a little church and Sunday-school running vigorously in his domain. David would not sing, but he listened to his wife sympathizingly. ”

“ What was more to the point, Wilkie sold his work to a Fife gentleman, Mr. Kinnear of Kinloch, for 25l. He then tried his fortune as a portrait-painter at Aberdeen and two or three other places with small success, and on 20 May 1805 he embarked in a Leith packet boat for London. With him he carried for sale a small picture called the ‘Bounty Money; or, the Village Recruit,’ which he had painted at Cults. ”

“ Passers-by might look directly in on the little table set between the windows for tea. The six-o'clock whistle had blown, and the men and girls were coming home from the shops. They straggled along, the men in their calico shirt-sleeves, the girls in their soiled dresses, turning into this yard and that with an air of content.
Araminta had worked in the shop, too, before she was married. Afterwards, David would not let her. "His wife might do his washing and ironing and cooking," he said, "but she should not work for other people as long as he had his two hands." ”