Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/347

Rh a field new to Scottish enterprise, as well as of uncertain promise. But the chief difficulty was to find a school in which Wilkie should study his future profession, as those of Rome and London were too expensive for his father's means. Fortunately, the Trustees' Academy of Edinburgh was accessible, and there he was admitted as a pupil at the age of fourteen, through the recommendation of the Earl of Leven, where he was so fortunate as to have John Graham for his teacher, and William Allan for his class-fellow. "The progress he [Wilkie] made in art," says the latter, was marvellous. Everything he attempted indicated a knowledge far beyond his years; and he soon took up that position in art which he maintained to the last. He was always on the look-out for character; he frequented trystes, fairs, and market-places, where there is generally a large assemblage of the country people of all ages, bargaining, or disposing of their various commodities. These were the sources whence he drew his best materials; there he found that vigorous variety of character impressed on his very earliest works, which has made them take such a lasting hold on the public mind."

After remaining in the Trustees' Academy five years, and obtaining a ten guinea prize, Wilkie returned to Cults, and resolved to commence his profession in earnest, by producing some original painting worthy of public attention. His choice was a truly Scottish subject the "Fair of Pitlessie," a village in his own neighbourhood. While the grouping and incidents were to be original, the characters were to be veritable persons; for "I now see," he said, "how superior painting from nature is to anything that our imagination, assisted by our memory, can conceive." But how to get these personages to sit there lay the difficulty, for few men, and least of all, Scotchmen, are ambitious of figuring in a picture where drollery or caricature is to predominate. At last a strange expedient suggested itself one Sunday at church, on marking one of his victims whom he had destined for the Fair, nodding in the midst of sermon. Wilkie at once secured the man's likeness with a piece of red chalk on the blank leaf of his Bible. In this way, he went on from face to face, on successive Sabbaths, in the kirk; and not content with the sleepers, he next fell upon the wakeful, minister, elders, and precentor included, until every countenance of note in Pitlessie was faithfully copied. These doings could not long escape notice ; heavy complaints were made of the profanity of the young artist in thus desecrating the house of God and we scarcely hold his apology a just one, that while his hand and eye were thus employed his ear was as open as ever to listen. It was the Scottish apology of one who imagines, that the chief purpose of going to church is to hear a sermon. While he was thus procuring materials on the Sabbath, his week days were employed in transfer- ring them to the canvas, until the whole figures, 140 in all, were introduced, and the "Fair of Pitlessie" completed. It was a wonderful production of art, independently of the youth of the artist, who as yet had only reached his nineteenth year; and as such he valued it when his judgment was riper, and his power of colouring more complete, so that he thus wrote of it to a friend in 1812: "The picture of the country fair I saw when I was last in Scotland; and although it is no doubt very badly painted, it has more subject and more entertainment in it than any other three pictures I have since produced." In the meantime the whole country side rang with the fame of this wonderful picture, the like of which had never been seen in Scotland, so that the profanity of the painter was soon forgot; and an old woman, who was supposed to