Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/358

622 nothing but failure. In such contrariety, the aspirant for fame must listen to all or none, and Wilkie chose the latter alternative.

Allusion has already been made to two important commissions which Wilkie had received previous to his departure to Italy: the first of these was a picture of the entrance of George IV. into the Palace of Holyrood; the second, of John Knox preaching before the Lords of the Congregation. Upon these he had wrought for a considerable time before his tour commenced, until the state of his health obliged him to abandon them when they were little more than mere outlines. He now braced himself for the task of completing them, and in 1830 the "Entrance into Holyrood" appeared in the exhibition. It was successful both with the sovereign and the public, not only as a happily executed representation of a great public event, but a faithful portraiture of the living actors and feudal accessories that composed the well-known features of this splendid national ovation. During the same year that it was completed, the great personage who formed the grand central object of this pageant, and in whose honour it had been created, passed away to the tomb, after he had outlived the pomps and pageantries of royalty, which no king had ever more highly enjoyed; and with George IV. passed away from us, and perhaps for ever, those regal triumphs and processions so little suited to this matter-of-fact and utilitarian era of British history. How different, and yet how gratifying the visits of royalty have now become to their long forsaken home in Edinburgh! The Knox painting, which was finished after that of Holyrood, appeared in the exhibition of 1832. Into this painting, so truly Scottish in its subject, and so connected also with his own native country, Wilkie threw himself with his utmost ardour, and the result was a picture upon which the eye of Scotland will always rest with pleasure. The collection of so many personages renowned in the history of our Reformation; the tale which each countenance tells, as part and parcel of the great event; and the vehement impassioned preacher himself, whose sermon was the death knell of the cathedral in which it was delivered, and the superstition of which that building was the great metropolitan representative, are now as generally known as the event itself, ia consequence of the thousands of engravings that have been multiplied of the original. Besides this picture, which was painted for Sir Robert Peel, Wilkie sent to the exhibition a portrait of William IV., to whom he was now painter in ordinary, as he had been to his predecessor.

From 1832 to 1834 was a busy period with the artist, as every royal and noble personage was eager to sit for his portrait to such a limner, although Wilkie himself had no particular liking to portrait painting. In the exhibition of 1834, his diligence appeared in six pictures, which had their full share of approbation. These were, 1, The Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, as Constable of the Tower, with his Charger;" which he executed at Strathfieldsay, where both hero and horse were accessible to the painter. 2, "Not at Home." This is a usual incident, where a disappointed dun is departing from the door on being told that the master is abroad, while the master himself is watching unseen from the corner of a window, and waiting until the coast is clear. 3, "Portrait of the Queen, in the Dress worn at the Coronation." 4, "Spanish Mother and Child." 6, "Portrait of Sir John Leslie, Professor of Natural Philosophy." 6, "Portrait of a Lady." On the following year (1835) he sent other six pictures to the exhibition, of which the foremost in point of merit and importance was, 1, "Christopher Columbus submitting the