Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/357

Rh The return of Wilkie to England solved every doubt. Previous to his arrival, rumours were afloat of the change that had occurred in his style of painting, and of the stir which his new productions had occasioned in Madrid; but on his return to London in June, 1828, his friends were delighted not only to find his health restored, but the character of his paintings improved. Still, however, his Spanish pictures executed under the first outburst of the new inspiration, beautiful and admired though they were, needed, as he well knew an elaborate revisal before they could be committed along with his name to the public, and to posterity, and, therefore, he touched and retouched them with a careful hand in his studio at Kensington. Immediately on his arrival, the king wished to see the fruits of his Italian tour, and was so pleased with them that he purchased "The Pifferari," and "The Princess washing the Female Pilgrims' Feet," two paintings which Wilkie had executed at Geneva. The three Spanish pictures were equally approved of by the royal critic, and purchased for his own collection, besides a fourth which was still in preparation; and Wilkie felt not a little flattered by the resemblance which was traced in these paintings to Rembrandt, Murillo, and Velasquez. The public at large was soon after invited to judge in turn, as the pictures were sent to the Academy exhibition of May, 1829.

Of these productions, now so widely known by the art of the engraver, the most popular was "The Maid of Saragossa." This preference was occasioned not only by the romantic nature of the subject, which was still the theme of national eulogium, but the colouring and style of artistic execution in which the event was embodied; and the crowds that gathered before the picture knew not which figure the most highly to admire. Augostina stepping over the body of her fallen lover, to take his place at the gun or Palafox (a correct likeness for which the hero himself sat) putting his shoulder to the wheel, to bring the gun into a right position or Father Consola9ion, the chief engineer in the defence, pointing out with his crucifix the object to be aimed at or the martyred priest, Boggiero, writing the despatch, which is to be intrusted to the carrier-pigeon. The second, called "The Spanish Posada," represented a Guerilla council of war, in which a Dominican monk, a Jesuit, and a soldier emblematic of the character of the Spanish resistance are deliberating on the best means of rousing and directing the national patriotism. The third painting was "The Guerilla's Departure," where a young peasant, after being armed for battle, and shrived by his confessor, lights his cigar at that of the priest before he hies to the field. Besides these, there were four of Wilkie's paintings in the exhibition which he had executed in Italy, and the portrait of the Earl of Kellie, of which mention has been already made. And now the artist's dreaded ordeal had to be encountered and passed anew. It remained to be seen what the world at large, independently of the judgment of George IV., which was sometimes at fault upon the Fine Arts, would say of these paintings, and the new style of their author. The verdict was precisely what might have been expected from so marked a change. The many, who are pleased to be delighted without taking the trouble to analyze their feelings, only saw in the alteration a fresh source of admiration, and were accordingly both loud and unmeasured in their praise. But with the critical part of the public it was otherwise; and while some regretted that he had abandoned the minute and laborious finish of his earlier pieces, others thought that he was over- ambitious in thus seeking to occupy more than one field of excellence, and predicted