Sir david wilkie biography of michael j

He painted successfully in a wide variety of genres, including historical scenes , portraits, including formal royal ones, and scenes from his travels to Europe and the Middle East. His main base was in London , but he died and was buried at sea, off Gibraltar , returning from his first trip to the Middle East. He was sometimes known as the "people's painter".

He was the son of the parish minister of Cults , Fife. Caroline Wilkie was a relative. In , after he had attended school at Pitlessie , Kingskettle and Cupar , his father reluctantly agreed to his becoming a painter. From William Allan afterwards Sir William Allan and president of the Royal Scottish Academy and John Burnet , the engraver of Wilkie's works, we have an interesting account of his early studies, of his indomitable perseverance and power of close application, of his habit of haunting fairs and marketplaces, and transferring to his sketchbook all that struck him as characteristic and telling in figure or incident, and of his admiration for the works of Alexander Carse and David Allan , two Scottish painters of scenes from humble life.

Among his pictures of this period might be mentioned a subject from Macbeth , Ceres in Search of Proserpine , and Diana and Calisto , which in gained a premium of ten guineas at the Trustees' Academy, while his pencil portraits of himself and his mother, dated that year, and now in the possession of the Duke of Buccleuch , prove that Wilkie had already attained considerable certainty of touch and power of rendering character.

In , Wilkie left the Trustees' Academy and returned to Cults.

He is widely regarded as

In addition to this elaborate figure-piece, Wilkie was much employed at the time upon portraits, both at home and in Kinghorn , St Andrews and Aberdeen. One of his first patrons in London was Robert Stodart, a pianoforte maker, a distant connection of the Wilkie family, who commissioned his portrait and other works and introduced the young artist to the dowager countess of Mansfield.

Wilkie now turned to historical scenes, and painted his Alfred in the Neatherd's Cottage , for the gallery illustrative of English history which was being formed by Alexander Davison. After its completion he returned to genre-painting, producing the Card-Players and the admirable picture of the Rent Day which was composed during recovery from a fever contracted in while on a visit to his native village.

It was followed in by the well-known Blind Man's Buff , a commission from the Prince Regent , to which a companion picture, The Penny Wedding , was added in In November he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy , when he had hardly attained the age prescribed by its laws, and in February he became a full Academician.