Sir David Wilkie’s influence on British genre painting, domestic and historical, both during his lifetime and throughout the nineteenth century was profound. In his lifetime, he was regarded as the equal of his great contemporaries Turner and Constable.Whilst his Scottish contemporaries followed his lead in subject matter and learned from his prodigious technical skills, they were an individualistic and disparate group of painters. In 1805 Wilkie, aged 20, moved to London and his immediate success gave other Scottish painters the courage to follow him.
Our exhibition marks the publication of David Wilkie: The Complete Paintings by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Written by Hamish Miles (1925–2017) and edited by Alex Kidson, this catalogue is the culmination of decades of research and is the first complete catalogue of Wilkie’s paintings.