| David Wilkie - The son of a minister, was born in Cults, Fife, on 18 November 1785. He attended the Trustees' Academy of Design in Edinburgh from 1799 to 1804 and, upon completing his studies, moved to London in 1805 and gained admission at the Royal Academy where his contemporaries included Andrew Geddes. Here he encountered almost immediate success when the first of his realistic portrayals of rural life, The Village Politicians, was unveiled at the Academy's 1806 exhibition. A string of equally acclaimed paintings in the same vein followed, including The Blind Fiddler (1807), The Card Players, The Rent Day (both 1808), The Village Festival (1812), Blind Man's Buff (1813), Distraining for Rent (1815), The Scotch, or Penny Wedding (1818). The homely simplicity of Wilkie's compositions stood in marked contrast to the artificial and contrived nature of much contemporary genre painting and signalled a turning-point in British Art. Together with Sir Henry Raeburn, he was hailed as the founder of a new 'Scottish School' of painting. Wilkie collaborated on popular print-versions of his paintings with Abraham Raimbach which brought both men considerable financial success. Public acclaim was accompanied by professional recognition. Wilkie was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1809, when he was only 24 years old, and a full member in 1812. Following the death of Raeburn in 1823, he was appointed His Majesty's Limner for Scotland.
Wilkie's always frail health was badly shaken in 1825 by a series of family bereavements and by the financial collapse of his print sellers Heath & Robinson. A long stay in Italy permitted him to convalesce, followed by a visit to Spain which would prove an artistic revelation. Velasquez and Murillo now displaced the Dutch masters as his chief mentors and in the Royal Academy's 1829 exhibition he unveiled eight new works painted under their influence, including The Maid of Saragossa, The Pifferari, and The Guerrilla Council of War. The Spanish style continued to inform his most important later works such as Preaching of Knox before the Lords of the Congregation (1832), The First Earring (1835), Napoleon and the Pope in Conference at Fontainebleau (1836), and Sir David Baird Discovering the Body of Tippoo Saib (1839). He succeeded Sir Thomas Lawrence as Painter-in-Ordinary to the King in 1830 and was knighted in 1836. In 1840 he travelled to Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria (where he painted the Pacha Mehemet Ali). He died suddenly on the return journey and was buried at sea near Gibraltar, an event commemorated in one of J.M.W. Turner's most celebrated paintings. |
