Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/604

Rh 568 W I L W I L spondence ivith his Friends, in five volumes in 1805. A Life by Fitz gerald has quite recently been published. ( W. P. C. ) WILKESBARRE, a city of the United States, the county seat of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, is situated on the right bank of the north branch of the Susquehanna river in the Wyoming valley, 98 miles north-north-west from Philadelphia. The business portion lies in the bottom lands, while the residence portions have extended into the adjacent hilly country. It is entered by four rail ways, the Central of New Jersey, that of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the Lehigh Valley, and the Pennsylvania. The city is irregularly laid out. The population in 1880 was 23,339; in 1870 it was 10,174. Wilkesbarre is in an anthracite mining district, and its industries, while relating in general to this product, in clude also important manufactories of lace, wire, and cutlery, and numerous machine-shops. After several attempts, which were rendered futile by Indian hostilities, a settlement was finally effected upon the site of Wilkesbarre in 1770. Eight years later the whole region was depopulated by the Wyoming massacre, and the infant town, with many others, was sacked and burned. In the same year a fort was erected upon the site of the ruined village, around which the town was rebuilt. Up to 1855 its growth was very slow and uncertain. The discovery of means of using the anthracite coal, which is found in abundance in the neighbourhood, gave an immense impetus to the growth and prosperity of the city. WILKIE, SIR DAVID (1785-1841), Scottish subject- painter, was born on 18th November 1785, the son of the parish minister of Cults in Fifeshire. He very early de veloped an extraordinary love for art : he was accustomed to say that he could draw before he could read and paint before he could spell, and at school he used to barter his sketches and portraits for slate-pencils and marbles. He was also noted for his keen and constant observation of the village life around him ; and a friend has recorded that he &quot; liked better to stand and look at his companions at their games than to join in their play.&quot; In 1799, after he had attended school at Pitlessie, Kettle, and Cupar, his father reluctantly yielded to his desire to become a painter ; and through the influence of the earl of Leven Wilkie was admitted to the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh, and began the study of art under John Graham, the able teacher of the school. 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 persever ance and power of close application, of his habit of haunt ing fairs and market-places, and transferring to his sketch book all that struck him as characteristic and telling in figure or incident, and of his admiration for the works of Carse and David Allan, two Scottish painters of scenes from humble life. Among his pictures of this period are mentioned a subject from Macbeth, Ceres in Search of Proserpine, and Diana and Calisto, which in 1803 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 he had already attained considerable certainty of touch and power of rendering character. A scene from Allan Ramsay, and a sketch from MacneilFs ballad of Scot land s Skaith, afterwards developed into the well-known Village Politicians, were the first subjects in which his true artistic individuality began to assert itself. In 1804 Wilkie returned to Cults, established himself in the manse, and commenced his first important subject- picture, Pitlessie Fair, which includes about 140 figures, and in which he introduced portraits of his neighbours and of several members of his family circle. . This work, which was purchased by Kinnear of Kinloch for 25, is rather hot and unpleasant in tone and colouring ; but it is a picture of the greatest interest and promise, so full of incident and character as to justify its painter s remark,, when he saw it twelve years afterwards, that it contains &quot; more subject and entertainment than any other three pictures which I have since produced.&quot; 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. In the spring of 1805 he left Scotland for London, carrying with him his Bounty -Money, or the Village Recruit, which he soon disposed of for Q, and began to study in the schools of the Royal Academy. One of his first patrons in London was Stodart, a pianoforte maker, a distant connexion of the Wilkie family, who commis sioned his portrait and other works and introduced the young artist to the dowager countess of Mansfield. This lady s son was the purchaser of the Village Politicians, which attracted great attention when it was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1806, where it was followed in the succeeding year by the Blind Fiddler, a commission from the painter s lifelong friend Sir George Beaumont. Wilkie now turned aside into the paths of historical art, and painted his Alfred in the Neatherd s Cottage, for the gallery illustrative of English history which was being formed by Alexander Davison. The picture was executed with the most conscientious care, and subjected to many alterations, but in the end it proved far from a success. It bears no vivid impress of reality; the figure of the king is wanting in dignity and character ; indeed the subject was one for which the artist had no essential sympathy, and into which he was unable to project his imagination effectively. After its completion he wisely returned to genre-painting, producing the Card-Players and the admir able picture of the Rent Day, which was composed during recovery from a fever contracted in 1807 while on a visit to his native village. His next great work was the Ale- House Door, afterwards entitled the Village Festival (now in the National Gallery), which was purchased by J. J. Angerstein for 800 guineas. It has been styled by Leslie &quot; the most artificial of Wilkie s earlier productions.&quot; Its figures seem rather small for the extent of canvas ; but the separate groups are excellent, and in its handling, in the exquisite delicacy and refinement of touch, and in the variety and beauty of its broken tints it bears marks of the most distinct progress. It was followed in 1813 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 1818. Meanwhile Wilkie s eminent success in art had been rewarded by professional honours. In November 1809 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, when he had hardly attained the age prescribed by its laws, and in February 1811 he became a full academician. In 1812 he opened an exhibition of his collected works in Pall Mall, but the experiment was unsuccessful, entailing pecuniary loss upon the artist. In 1814 he executed the Letter of Introduction, one of the most delicately finished and perfect of his cabinet pictures. In the same year he made his first visit to the Continent, and at Paris entered upon a profitable and delighted study of the works of art collected in the Louvre. Interesting particulars of the time are preserved in his own matter-of-fact diary, and in the more sprightly and flowing pages of the journal of Haydon, his fellow-traveller. On his return he began Distraining for Rent, one of the most popular and dramatic of his works. In 1816 he made a tour through Holland and Belgium in company with Raimbach, the engraver of many of his paintings. The Sir Walter Scott and his Family, a cabinet-sized picture with small full-length figures in the dress of Scottish peasants, Avas the result of a visit to Abbotsford in 1818. Reading a Will, a commission