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  • lage Recruit (1805). In 1805 he went to

London and entered the Royal Academy as a student with a certain reputation which was acknowledged by leading artists. In 1806 he produced the Village Politicians, which at once brought him fame. This was followed by the Blind Fiddler (1807, National Gallery, London), Alfred in the Neatherd's Cottage (1807), Card Players (1807), and Rent Day (1808). In 1809 he was elected an A.R.A., and in 1811, R.A. In the latter year he painted the Village Festival (National Gallery, London). These works are full of character, well composed, and carefully drawn, but they are thinner in colour and less highly finished than the Blind Man's Buff (1812, Buckingham Palace), Distraining for Rent (1814), Duncan Gray (1814), Rabbit on the Wall (1815), Penny Wedding (1818), Reading the Will (1820, New Pinakothek, Munich), Chelsea Pensioners (1821), Parish Beadle (1822, National Gallery, London), and the Highlander's Home (1825), all of which belong to his middle and best period, in which the influence of the Dutch and Flemish masters is conspicuous. In 1814 Wilkie visited Paris, in 1816 Holland, and in 1817 Scotland, where he was entertained at Abbotsford, and painted his group of Sir Walter Scott and his Family. In 1832 he exhibited John Knox preaching before the Lords of the Congregration (National Gallery, London), one of his most esteemed pictures in his second manner; and in 1835 a series of Irish subjects, a portrait of Queen Adelaide, for the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and that of William IV., by whom he was knighted in 1836, for Waterloo Chapel at Windsor. In 1825 Sir David again went to Paris, and visited also Italy, Germany, and Spain, returning to London in 1828. In 1840 he went to the East for his health, but grew worse in the following year, and dying on shipboard in Gibraltar Bay he was buried at sea. In his third manner, the result of his Italian and Spanish studies, Wilkie aimed at Venetian effects of colour, and produced pictures less esteemed than those of an earlier time in which subject, conception, and technical treatment are in harmony. Other works: The Bagpiper (1813), Newsmongers (1820), Wooded Landscape (1822), The First Ear-Ring (1834), National Gallery, London; John Knox dispensing the Sacrament at Calder House, Pitlessie Fair, Portrait of his Sister, National Gallery, Edinburgh; Cotter's Saturday Night (Moore sale, 1872, 590 guineas); Only Daughter (do., 630 guineas); Errand Boy (Knowles sale, 1864, 1,050 guineas); Cut Finger; Sunday Morning; Jews-Harp; Pedlar; Village School; Maid of Saragossa; Guerilla Council of War; Monks in Cathedral of Toledo; Columbus at La Rábida; and many portraits. Most of his pictures have been engraved.—Cunningham, Life (London, 1843); Redgrave; Ch. Blanc, École anglaise; F. de Conches; Mollet, Biog. Great Artists; Heaton, Works of Sir D. W. (London, 1868); Painters of Georgian Era, 49; L'Artiste (1882), ii. 97; Sandby, i. 336.




WILLAERTS, ABRAHAM, born at Utrecht in 1613 (?), died there in 1671 (?). Dutch school; marine and portrait painter, son and pupil of Adam Willaerts, then studied under Jan Bylert, and in Paris under Simon Vouet; master of the guild at Utrecht in 1624. Works: Portrait of an Admiral,

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