Wilkie (Sir David), R.A.
DAVID WILKIE, the son of a Scotch minister, was born in 1785. His genius for the art in which he was destined to become so famous, was displayed even in his infancy, and led to his being sent to study in the Edinburgh Academy, where he had for his fellow-students Sir William Allen and John Burnet. At the age of nineteen his performances had attracted so much notice that he was confirmed in his professional career. He started for London, studied at the Academy, became an exhibitor, and so paved the way for his bright success of after-years. Among his intimate companions was Haydon,—another equally celebrated painter, though not equally successful, who relates the following:—
“When the Academy opened, Wilkie, who had gained admission as a probationer by means of a drawing from the Niobe, took his seat with his class. Something of his Edinburgh fame had preceded him: Jackson, at that time a student, seems to have seen as well as heard of him, for he wrote to me, then young and ardent, to hasten from Devonshire, for that a tall, pale, thin Scotsman had just come to study at the Academy, who had done something from Macbeth, of which report spoke highly. Touched with this, I came at once to London and went to the Academy. Wilkie, the most punctual of mankind, was there before me. We sat and drew in silence for some time; at length Wilkie rose, came and looked over my shoulder, said nothing, and resumed his seat. I rose, went and looked over his shoulder, said nothing, and resumed my seat. We saw enough to satisfy us of each other’s skill, and when the class broke up we went and dined together.”
The acquaintance thus begun ripened into a warm friendship, notwithstanding occasional disputes arising from a dissimilarity in taste of the two artists.
Haydon also relates the following:—
“Wilkie, who was always hospitable in his nature, invited me one morning to breakfast, soon after his arrival in London, I went accordingly to 8, Norton Street, and knocked at the door of his apartments; a voice said, ‘Come in.’ I opened the door and found, instead of the breakfast which I expected, the painter sitting partly naked and drawing from his left knee for a figure which he had on his easel. He was not at all moved, for nought moved Wilkie; and when I expressed some surprise at what he was about, he replied with a smile, ‘It’s capital practice, let me tell you.’”
About this time (1805), in a letter written by Wilkie to a fellow-student, occurs the following characteristic passage: “And I am convinced now that no picture can possess real merit unless it is a just representation of nature.”
On the sale of his first commission picture, “The Village Politicians,” he thus buoyantly concludes a letter to his father, “My ambition is got beyond all bounds, and I have the vanity to hope that Scotland will one day be proud to boast of your affectionate son,
“David Wilkie.”
On the death of his father, he invited his mother and sister over from Scotland to live with him in London. In after-years, writing to a friend, he adds, “If I were desired to name the happiest hour of my life, I should say it was when I first saw my honoured mother and much loved sister sitting beside me while I was painting.”
Another scene, of a different description, at Wilkie’s house is worthy of insertion. Mr. Collins’s brother, Francis, possessed a remarkably retentive memory, which he was accustomed to use for the amusement of himself and others, in the following way. He learnt by heart a whole number of one of Dr. Johnson’s “Ramblers,” and used to cause considerable diversion to those in the secret, by repeating it all through to a new company in a conversational tone, as if it were the accidental product of his own fancy,—now addressing his flow of moral eloquence to one astonished auditor, and now to another. One day, when the two brothers were dining at Wilkie’s, it was determined to try the experiment upon their host. After dinner, accordingly, Mr. Collins paved the way for the coming speech, by leading the conversation imperceptibly to the subject of the paper in the “Rambler.” At the right moment Francis Collins began. As the first grand Johnsonian sentences struck upon his ear (uttered, it should be remembered, in the most elaborately careless and conversational manner,) Wilkie started at the high tone that the conversation had suddenly assumed, and looked vainly to his friend Collins for explanation, who, on his part sat with his eyes respectfully fixed on his brother, all rapt attention to the eloquence that was dropping from his lips. Once or twice, with perfect mimicry of the conversational character he had assumed, Francis Collins hesitated, stammered, and paused, as if collecting his thronging ideas. At one or two of these intervals, Wilkie endeavoured to speak, to ask a moment for consideration; but the torrent of his guest’s eloquence was not to be delayed,—“it was too rapid to stay for any man,—away it went” like Mr. Shandy’s oratory before “My Uncle Toby,”—until at last it reached its destined close; and then Wilkie, who, as host, thought it his duty to break silence by the first compliment, exclaimed with the most perfect unconsciousness of the trick that had been played him, “Ay, ay, Mr. Francis; verra clever (though I did not understand it all),—verra clever!”
His friends relate of him (Wilkie) that he could draw before he could write. He recollected this himself, and spoke to me of an old woman who had in her cottage near his father’s manse a clean scoured wooden stool, on which she used to allow him to draw with a coarse carpenter’s pencil, and then scrub it out to be ready for another day.
Collins relates the following of Wilkie with whom he lived on terms of the closest intimacy.
“When Lord Mulgrave’s pictures were sold at Christie’s, Wilkie waited in the neighbourhood whilst I attended the sale. It was quite refreshing to see his joy when I returned with a list of the prices. The sketches produced more than five hundred per cent., the pictures three hundred. I recollect one,—a small, early picture, called ‘Sunday Morning’—I asked Wilkie what he thought of its fetching, as it did, a hundred and ten pounds, and whether Lord Mulgrave had not got it cheap enough?—‘Why, he gave me fifteen pounds for it!’ When I expressed my surprise that he should have given so small a sum for so clever a work, Wilkie, defending him, said:—‘Ah, but consider, as I was not known at that time, it was a great risk!’”
Dr. Chalmers was asked by Wilkie whether Principal Baird would preach before the King. (Now, Principal Baird had a sad way of crying in the pulpit.) “Why,” replied Chalmers, “if he does, it will be George Baird to George Rex, greeting!”
Wilkie died in the year 1841, aged 56 years.
“LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.”
This picture was suggested by the reception which the artist himself experienced, it is said by Cunningham in his Life of Wilkie, from one of the small wits about town, Caleb Whiteford by name, discoverer of the “cross-readings” in newspapers, and who set up for a judge in art. Some one desirous to do a good turn to Wilkie, when he first came to town, gave him a note to Caleb, who, struck with his very youthful look, inquired how old he was. “Really now,” said the artist, with the hesitation he bestowed on most questions. “Ha!” exclaimed Caleb; “introduce a man to me who knows not how old he is!” and regarded him with that dubious look which is the chief charm of the picture. This was in his mind when he formed the resolution to paint the subject.
COLLINS’S REMINISCENCES OF WILKIE.
“Wilkie was not quick in perceiving a joke, although he was always anxious to do so, and to recollect humorous stories, of which he was exceedingly fond. As instances, I recollect once when we were staying at Mr. Wells’s, at Redleaf, one morning at breakfast a very small puppy was running about under the table. ‘Dear me,’ said a lady, ‘how this creature teases me!’ I took it up and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr. Wells said, ‘That is a pretty nosegay.’—‘Yes,’ said I, ‘it is a dog-rose.’ Wilkie’s attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend’s pun: but all in vain,—he could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth’s joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head, (‘The Good Woman’) under the window from whence the quarrelsome wife is throwing the dinner into the street.
“Chantrey and Wilkie were dining alone with me, when the former, in his great kindness for Wilkie, ventured, as he said, to take him to task for his constant use of the word ‘relly’ (really) when listening to any conversation in which he was interested. ‘Now, for instance,’ said Chantrey, ‘suppose I was giving you an account of any interesting matter, you would constantly say, ‘Relly!’ ‘Relly!’ exclaimed Wilkie immediately, with a look of the most perfect astonishment.”
WILKIE’S ARREST AT CALAIS.
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. The observation was made in England that Wilkie sought his arrest on this occasion, wishing to re-enact the Hogarth incident: but his well-known unobtrusive manners and unaffected modesty completely vindicate him from such an accusation.
The following naïve account of the arrest of Sir David Wilkie is told by him in a letter to his friend and travelling companion, Abraham Raimbach, the celebrated engraver of many of the artist’s pictures:—
“On travelling through France the most singular occurrence was that of my being arrested at Calais, in the act of completing a sketch of the celebrated gate of Hogarth. A young Englishman, who had come from Lille with me, had agreed to remain with me while I was making the drawing; and as I had first obtained leave from the officer of the guard, I expected no sort of interruption. After I had been at work, however, about an hour, with a great crowd about me, a gendarme came to me, and with an imperious tone, said, ‘Par quelle autorité faites-vous cela, monsieur?’ I pointed to the officer on guard, and told him that he had given me leave. ‘Ce n’est rien—c’est défendu, monsieur. Il faut que vous preniez votre livre et m’accompagniez à l’Hôtel de Ville.’ This, of course, I agreed to most willingly, and beckoning my friend to go too, I went along with him, with all the people staring at us. At the Hôtel de Ville we were requested to go to the mayor, and as we were marching along to his house, the gendarme said, ‘Voila le maire,—arrêtons.’ We stopped till the mayor came up, and learning from us what was the matter, he dismissed the gendarme, took us back to his house, and told me, that as there were a number of people there, as in other places, who, on seeing a foreigner making a drawing of a fortified place, would naturally suppose it to be from a hostile intention, and finding it done en plein jour, would be apt to blame the magistrates for allowing it; he said it was necessary, therefore, that I should not go on with my drawing, although, from examining it, he was satisfied that I only did it for amusement, and therefore regretted the interruption.”—Memoirs of Abraham Raimbach, edited by his son, M. T. S. Raimbach, M.A.
HIS OPINION OF MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.
“The labours of Michael Angelo and Raphael have since been the chief object of my study,—by far the most intellectual. They make other works appear limited, and though high in all that is great, are still an example,—and a noble example too,—of how the accessories of a work may be treated with most advantage. No style can be so pure as to be above learning from them, nor so low and humble as not to gain even in its own way by their contemplation. They have that without which the Venus and the Apollo would lose their value, and with which the mean forms of Ostade and Rembrandt become instructive and sublime,—namely, expression and sentiment. To some of the younger artists here, however, I find they are a stumbling-block; things to be admired but not imitated, and less to be copied than any flat, empty piece of Venetian colouring that comes in their way. The effect of these works upon the unlearned public at large deserves attention. Frescoes, when old, get dull and dry, and cannot be repaired or refreshed like oil; their impression, therefore, upon the common eye is not striking, and many people acknowledge this who, show them a new print from Raphael or Michael Angelo, would be delighted. Vividness is perhaps necessary to make any work generally impressive; and suppose these fresh as they were at first, and as I have seen some recent frescoes, I believe they would be the most beautiful things imaginable,—popular beyond a doubt, as it is on record they were so.”—Memoirs of Abraham Raimbach.