Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/262

 11 Feb. 1811 he was elected a royal academician, and in this year exhibited two pictures, ‘A Humorous Scene’ and ‘Portrait of a Gamekeeper.’ In May of the following year the ‘Alehouse Door’ was exhibited, with a number of other pictures, in a separate Wilkie exhibition, at No. 87 Pall Mall. In addition to ‘Pitlessie Fair’ and a number of pictures which had appeared on the academy walls, this included several studies and original sketches. Although it advanced his reputation, it was not a financial success, and before the month was out the artist had to pay 32l. in order to release the ‘Village Festival,’ which had been unfairly seized for rent owing by a previous tenant of the room. This incident, it was said, gave rise to the subsequent and more successful painting known as ‘Distraining for Rent.’ But perhaps one of the most interesting circumstances in connection with this enterprise was the announcement in the catalogue that Abraham Raimbach [q. v.] was engraving the ‘Village Politicians.’

At the end of 1812 (1 Dec.) Wilkie's father died, and in August 1813 his mother and his sister Helen joined him in London at 24 Lower Phillimore Place, Kensington, a house which he had taken in 1813, and where he continued to reside until 1824. In 1813 he exhibited ‘Blind Man's Buff,’ and was engaged on ‘The Bagpiper;’ ‘Duncan Gray; or the Refusal,’ and the reminiscence of his first visit to Caleb Whitefoord, ‘The Letter of Introduction,’ which now belongs to Mr. Ralph Brocklebank. The last two figured in the exhibition of 1814, after which he set out on a visit to Paris with Haydon, duly chronicled by the latter, with much graphic description of his companion's queer Scotch cautions and wonderments. ‘The greatest oddity’ in that Paris of oddities, according to Haydon, ‘was unquestionably David Wilkie. His horrible French, his strange, tottering, feeble, pale look; his carrying about his prints to make bargains with printsellers, his resolute determination never to leave the restaurants till he had got all his change right to a centime, his long disputes about sous and demi-sous with the dame du comptoir, whilst madame tried to cheat him, and as she pressed her pretty ringed fingers on his arm without making the least impression, her “Mais, Monsieur!” and his Scotch “Mais, Madame!” were worthy of Molière’ (, Life of Haydon, 1853, i. 254).

At the beginning of July they returned to England, and to ‘Distraining for Rent,’ of which the genesis has been given. It was finished in this year, and bought for six hundred guineas by the British Institution, who exhibited it in 1815. In the same year Wilkie visited Brighton with Haydon. But a more important tour was that which he took in the autumn of 1816 to the Netherlands with Raimbach, who engraved ‘Distraining for Rent.’ It was upon this occasion that Wilkie had the odd experience of repeating at Calais the misadventure of William Hogarth [q. v.] He, too, was arrested for sketching Calais gate, and carried before the mayor, by whom he was politely dismissed. He still solicited subscribers to the engravings of his pictures wherever he went, as at Paris; but it may be assumed that the Dutch and Flemish schools of painting interested him more nearly than the galleries of the Louvre. At all events, his letters to Haydon were declared to be ‘full of fresh and close observation,’ which could scarcely have been said of his French diary.

Scotland was the scene of his holiday wanderings in 1817. Here he became acquainted with Dr. Chalmers, and was invited to Abbotsford by Scott, then writing ‘Rob Roy.’ ‘I have my hand in the mortar-tub, but I have a chamber in the wall for you, besides a most hearty welcome. I have also one or two old jockies with one foot in the grave, and know of a herd's hut or two tottering to the fall, which you will find picturesque,’ said the Shirra. Another notability he met was James Hogg (1770–1835) [q. v.], who was pleased to find him so young a man. At Abbotsford Wilkie painted (for Sir Adam Ferguson) the Scott family in the garb of south-country peasants. This work was exhibited in 1818, at the close of which year he completed for the prince regent one of his most popular efforts, ‘The Scotch, or Penny Wedding,’ now in the royal collection. ‘The Reading of the Will’ (at the Pinacothek at Munich) and several smaller pictures followed. Meanwhile, the indefatigable artist was slowly carrying forward a larger work, which had been commissioned by the Duke of Wellington, ‘The Waterloo Gazette; or, the Chelsea Pensioners reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo,’ begun in 1817 and finished in 1821. It appears from Wilkie's ‘Journal’ that it cost him ‘full sixteen months' constant work,’ and the duke paid him twelve hundred guineas, characteristically counting out the money himself to the artist in banknotes. The picture was exhibited in 1822, making nearly as much stir as Waterloo itself. According to the painter's critics, it marks a second manner in his work, a transition from the influence of Teniers to the influence of Ostade. In July 1822 he went