John Constable, The Bridges Family, 1804.

Oil on canvas, 135.9 x 183.8 cm. Tate Collection, London.

 

 

Wilkie[9] gave so many proofs of his taste for drawing, that his family sent him, when he was fourteen years old, to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh. The work that he did there during four years was in the grand style, Dianas and Callistos, under the direction of John Graham, R.A., historical painter. On his return to Cults, he was struck by the picturesque sight of a rural fair in the neighbourhood, and painted his first picture of village customs, Pitlessie Fair. Already his work was remarkable for the truth of its local colouring, but its reddish tints are unpleasing, and it is coarsely painted. He sold this picture for twenty-five pounds, and resolved to go and try his fortune in London, where he arrived in May, 1805. A year later Wilkie attracted attention by exhibiting at the Royal Academy his Village Politicians.

From thenceforth, his name, already known, became more and more popular, as he exhibited successively The Blind Fiddler, The Card Players, The Rent Day, The Jew’s Harp, The Cut Finger, The Wardrobe Ransacked, The Village Festival, etc. etc. Meanwhile he painted, on commission, Alfred in the Herdsman’s Cottage, which did not add to his fame. He was scarcely aged twenty-four years when he was made Associate of the Royal Academy, of which he became member two years later, in 1811. In 1814, he spent five or six weeks in Paris, but it was not from this first journey that the great change that took place later in his style dates.

Between 1811 and 1825, he painted Blind Man’s Buff, The Letter of Introduction, Duncan Gray, Distraining for Rent, The Rabbit on the Wall, The Penny Wedding, The Whisky Still of Loch Gilphead, Reading the Will, and The Chelsea Pensioners, for the Duke of Wellington. From this time (1825) Wilkie completely altered the choice of subjects for his pictures. After travelling on the continent, and visiting in turn France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, he devoted himself entirely to historical paintings and portraits. He had been greatly impressed by the works of Correggio, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. Wilkie’s most celebrated picture in his second style is his Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of the Congregation (1832). David Wilkie was fifteen years old in 1800, and this is the date of the origin of genre painting in England; it existed then solely in the works of the young Scotsman, even in his digressions from the English system. William Collins and some other pleasing artists worthily succeeded him.

William Collins’ father, a picture dealer in Great Titchfield Street, was the friend of George Morland, who first took the child as a sort of apprentice, then as a pupil. From 1807 to 1814, Collins studied and exhibited at the Academy, of which he was elected Associate (1814), and member in 1820. He had as patrons, by turns, Lister Parker, who bought one of his first pictures, Children Playing with a Nest, then Sir Thomas Heathcote, Sir John Leicester, Sir George Beaumont, and Sir Robert Peel. In the space of forty years he exhibited 121 pictures at the Academy, amongst others were The Little Fifer, The Pet Lamb, The Birdnesters, The Fishermen’s Departure, The Hop Gathering, As Happy as a King, Effect of Early Snow, Haunts of the Seafowl, and a large number of subjects borrowed from Norfolk coast life.

Although he visited Paris (1817), travelled in Belgium and Holland (1828), and lived in Boulogne (1829), his charming and homely style did not suffer any deterioration. But in 1836, stung in his turn, as Wilkie had been, by the tarantula of high art, he went to Italy, stayed there two years, and was from thenceforth lost to his vocation. In 1840, he exhibited Our Lord in the midst of the Doctors, and, in 1841, The Disciples at Emmaus, miserable imitations of the worst paintings one can think of in this class of subject. Also in 1840, he travelled in Germany, and in 1842 in Iceland, fruitlessly seeking new impulses to stimulate his exhausted vein of talent.