Thomas Wilkie

“ But the smile arising from inward delight is as different from the laughter excited by strangeness and drollery as any one thing can be from another. It is, in fact, the very essence of Wilkie’s pictures, that there is literally nothing strange, and consequently nothing droll and laughter-moving about them.
From the works of no one English artist have I received so much pure and unmixed pleasure and instruction as I have from those of Sir David Wilkie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is also a Scotch merry-making by Wilkie, full of rustic humour and glee, with occasional touches of tenderness and a general tone of beauty. A young girl endeavouring to draw her father from a revel, where he has already drank too much, is full of sweetness; and while she presses his arm in the tenderest manner on one side, a more ardent, not more anxious, pleader on the other, in the shape of a jovial youth, has amicably seized the old man by the collar, and endeavours to allure him from her gentle grasp. ”

“ When returning from a short Continental tour in 1816, Wilkie became involved in a difficulty at Calais similar to that of Hogarth at the same place, as indicated by our great moral painter in his print of “Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England.” Wilkie, while busily engaged in making a sketch of the gate, was accosted by an officer of police, and taken before the mayor, who told the artist he could not be permitted to make drawings of any of the fortifitions, and courteously dismissed him. ”

“ He broke off to light his pipe, when it was in full blast he continued.
"Presently a cove in an 'igh collar comes up an' says polite like to 'is lordship—
"'Would you kindly ask that gentleman to 'urry with 'is soup, sir,' meanin' Wilkie, 'there's a gentleman over there wot says 'e can't 'ear the band, an' this is 'is favourite tune.'"
"Mr. Bindle!" cried Sallie, who is very sensitive upon the subject of table manners.
"I'm sorry, miss, but you see poor ole Wilkie never 'ad no mother to teach 'im. Yes," he continued, "we 'ad a rare ole time, me an' Wilkie." ”

“ Perhaps the truest “painter” of the modern English school who could be called a master, and whose works would stand the test of criticism, is Wilkie. No praise could do justice to that masterpiece, “The Blind Fiddler,” with its minutely delicate handling of faces and hands, yet offering a grand breadth of style. The beautiful limpid colouring, the firmness, yet delicacy, of the touch, the pleasant, quiet, unforced humour of the scene—akin to that of Goldsmith—the brilliancy and largeness of treatment, are perfectly miraculous in a youth little more than twenty. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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’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.” ”

“ He had no idea of making the voyage twice for the accommodation of one man, that man not being the "boss," and one, besides, who did not seem over-likely to remember to tip. Jake's look afforded little encouragement to make a proposal, and that reminded Wilkie in time that the figure he himself would make would not be heroic if he arrived alone at the beach and said that the others were coming. He elevated his eyebrows into the British equivalent of a Frenchman's plaintive shrug, and sighed, and resigned himself to his fate. ”

“ As an artist, Mr. Wilkie is not at all equal to Teniers. Neither in truth and brilliant clearness of colouring, nor in facility of execution, is there any comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in both 253these respects, and our own countryman is positively defective, notwithstanding the very laudable care with which he finishes every part of his pictures. There is an evident smear and dragging of the paint, which is also of a bad purple, or puttyish tone, and which never appear in the pictures of the Flemish artist, any more than in a looking-glass. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I can see little to admire or like in the man Wilkie. Some good homely Scotch kindness for kith and kin, and for some old friends too perhaps; but generally the character seems not to rise above the dull prudentialities of a decent man in awe of the world and the great, and awfully careful about No. 1. No genuine enjoyment, save in study of Art, and getting money through that study. He is a fellow that you can't suppose ever to have been drunk or in love—too much a Presbyterian Elder for either you or me.
Mr. Murray received a communication (December 16, 1841) , from Mr. ”

“ These Wilkie prints, upon which Raimbach's reputation mainly rests, are excellent translations of the original pictures, the mode of execution, if somewhat coarse and deficient in freedom, being well suited to the subjects; they are entirely by his own hand, no assistants having been employed on them. The first two were the most popular; the last, owing to the painful nature of the subject, proved a comparative failure. Raimbach subsequently engraved two other plates after Wilkie, ‘The Parish Beadle,’ 1834, and ‘The Spanish Mother,’ 1836. ”

“ Apart from his skill as a painter Wilkie was an admirable etcher. The best of his plates, such as the “Gentleman at his Desk” (Laing, VII.) , the “Pope examining a Censer” (Laing, VIII.) , and the “Seat of Hands” (Laing, IV.) , are worthy to rank with the work of the greatest figure-etchers. During his lifetime he issued a portfolio of seven plates, and in 1875 Dr David Laing catalogued and published the complete series of his etchings and dry-points, supplying the place of a few copper-plates that had been lost by reproductions, in his Etchings of David Wilkie and Andrew Geddes. ”

“ You do not mention the school at Coleorton. Pray how is Wilkie in health, and also as to progress in his art? I do not doubt that I shall like Arnold's picture; but he would have been a better painter, if his genius {195} had led him to read more in the early part of his life. Wilkie's style of painting does not require that the mind should be fed from books; but I do not think it possible to excel in landscape painting without a strong tincture of the poetic spirit. [37]
OF THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COLEORTON.
Letter to Lady Beaumont. ”

“ These were sacred duties, since Wilkie’s share in a race-horse constituted his only claim to a footing in fashionable society. But it was a strong claim—a claim that justified the display of whips and spurs that decorated his apartments in the Rue du Helder, and allowed him to aspire to the character of a sporting man. Wilkie really imagined that folks were waiting for him at Vincennes; and that the fete would not be complete without his presence. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He justly animadverts upon the silly fashion of the day, in lauding the vulgar imitation of the worsted stockings by Thom. The subjects chosen were most unfit for sculpture,—their only immortality must be in Burns. We do not understand his extreme admiration of Wilkie; in a note on parallel perspective in sculpture, he adduces Raffaelle as an example of the practice, and closes by comparing him with Sir David Wilkie,—"known by the appellation of the Raffaelle of familiar life,"—men perfect antipodes to each other! ”

“ 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 draughtsmanship than those of his earlier period, some of them at least (the “Bride’s Toilet,” 1837, for instance) show a true gain and development in power of handling, and in mastery over complex and forcible colour harmonies. ”