Tag: Sir David Wilkie

Born in Cults in Fife in 1785, the genre, portrait painter and draftsman Sir David Wilkie was known for his anecdotal style, of which this present picture is a fine example. After studying in Edinburgh, Wilkie entered the Royal Academy schools in London in 1805, exhibiting there from 1806, before being elected a royal academician in 1811. His first important painting, “Pitlessie Fair” (1804), was a genre picture which was to set the style that Wilkie pursued for the next 20 years and in which he recorded the lives of the inhabitants of humble rural interiors with shrewd character observation and keen attention to detail. Such was the success of his genre painting – the “Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Despatch” – when exhibited in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1822, that the artist had to be protected by barriers from the crowds of admirers. Wilkie dramatially changed his painting style in later years when he developed a broader and bolder style and a stronger use of colour a style for which he was criticized by many of his contemporaries who missed his earlier genre style. But the history paintings and portraits that Wilkie created at this time have a Romantic boldness that appeals to modern viewers. Wilkie succeeded Sir Thomas Lawrence as painter to the king in 1830 and was knighted in 1836. In 1840 he visited the Holy Land to familiarize himself with the true background to religious painting, but died on the return journey, his burial at sea being commemorated by J.M.W. Turner in his painting “Peace: Burial at Sea”, in 1841.