THE LATE SIR DAVID WILKIE.

———

BY LOUIS FITZGERALD TASISTRO.

———

Under the head of Painting, England undoubtedly at present stands considerably above any of the continental nations; but they surpass her perhaps in an equal degree, in the sister Art of Sculpture, and in Music,—Italy in both of these, and Germany in the latter. France may perhaps be said to have reached the same general point that England has in all these Arts; but she cannot claim the same exceptions in favor of individual instances, in either of them. In musical composers, on the other hand, she surpasses England, and yet reaches to only a very moderate degree of excellence.

Sir David Wilkie was one of the most distinguished Artists, in his particular line, that England, or any other country ever possessed. He has, to be sure, produced, comparatively speaking, but few pictures; but in force and richness of expression, in truth and depth of character, in subtlety of thought, and felicity of invention, I have seen none in the same class that at all equal these few. In the above particulars, and in a marvellous truth and simplicity of pencil in delineating what he sees or remembers, Wilkie as far surpasses Teniers himself, as Teniers surpasses him in freedom and felicity of touch, and freshness, transparency, and beauty of coloring. And important as these latter qualities are in a picture, those which spring from, and appeal to, the intellect chiefly, must be allowed to be still more so.

The subject of Wilkie’s pictures are confined to what may be called the higher classes of low life, where the habits and institutions of modern society have hitherto, in a great measure, failed to diffuse that artificial and conventional form of character, which, if it does not altogether preclude the action of the feelings, at least forbids all outward manifestation of them. If Sir David had unfortunately devoted his peculiar and unrivalled power of depicting what is, to scenes in high, or even in middle life, he would have produced works altogether feeble and worthless; because he could only represent what actually did exist; and, in these classes of life, this, as far as regards its outward attributes, is smoothed and polished down to a plane and colorless surface, which will not admit the passage of any thing from within, and from which every thing without slides off like water-drops from the feathers of a bird.

Only think of making a picture of a party of ladies and gentlemen, assembled to hear a piece of political news read; or of the same persons listening to a solo on the violin by an eminent professor! And yet these are the subjects of Wilkie’s Village Politicians, and his Blind Fiddler; two of the most interesting and perfect works that ever proceeded from the pencil; and which at once evince in the artist, and excite in the spectator, more activity of thought, and play of sentiment, than are called forth at all the fashionable parties of London and Paris for a whole season.

Wilkie’s power was confined, as I have said, to the representation of what he saw; but he selected and combined this with such admirable judgment, and represented it with such unrivalled truth and precision, that his pictures impress themselves on the memory with all the force and reality of facts. We remember, and recur to, the scenes he places before us, just as we should to the real scenes if we had been present at them; and can hardly think of, and refer to them as any thing but real scenes. They seem to become part of our experience—to increase the stores of our actual knowledge of life and human nature; and the actors in them take their places among the persons we have seen and known in our intercourse with the living world.

Wilkie’s pictures are, in one sense of the term, the most national that were ever painted; and will carry down to posterity the face, character, habits, costume, etc. of the period and class which they represent, in a way that nothing else ever did or could; for they are literally the things themselves—the truth, and nothing but the truth. The painter allows himself no liberty or licence in the minutest particulars. He seems to have a superstitious reverence for the truth; and he would no more paint a lie than he would tell one. I suppose he has never introduced an article of dress or furniture into any one of his pictures, that he had not actually seen worn or used under the circumstances he was representing. If he had occasion to paint a peasant who had just entered a cottage on a rainy day, he would, as a matter of conscience, leave the marks of his dirty footsteps on the threshold of the door! This scrupulous minuteness of detail, which would be the bane of some class of art, is the beauty of his, coupled, and made subservient, as it was, to the most curious, natural, and interesting development of character, sentiment and thought.

But the most extraordinary examples of this artist’s professional skill, are those in which he has depicted some peculiar expression in the face and action of some one of his characters. The quantity and degree of expression that he has, in several of these instances, thrown into the compass of a face and figure of less than the common miniature size, is not to be conceived without being seen, and has certainly never before been equalled in the Art. His most extraordinary efforts of this kind are two, in which the expressions are not very agreeable, but which become highly interesting, on account of the extreme difficulty that is felt to have been overcome in the production of them. One of these is an old man, in the act of coughing violently; and the other is a child, who has cut his fingers.

But if this is the most extraordinary part of Wilkie’s pictures, and the part most likely to attract vulgar attention and curiosity, it is far from being the most valuable and characteristic. If it were, I should not regard him as the really great artist which I now do. The mere overcoming of difficulty, for the sake of overcoming it, and without producing any other ulterior effect, would be a mere idle waste of time and skill, and quite unworthy either of praise or attention. It is in these particular instances which I have noticed above, as in numerous others in different lines of art, a mere sleight of hand, exceedingly curious, as exhibiting the possible extent of human skill, but no more.

In Wilkie’s pictures, this exhibition of mere manual skill is used very sparingly, and is almost always kept in subjection to, or brought in aid of, other infinitely more valuable ends. With the single exception of the “Cut Finger,” which is a mere gratuitous effort of this manual dexterity, all his pictures are moral tales, more or less interesting, from their perfectly true delineation of habits and manners, or impressive, from their development of character, passion, and sentiment. The “Opening of the Will” is as fine in this way, as any of Sir Walter Scott’s novels; and the “Rent Day” includes a whole series of national tales of English pastoral life in the nineteenth century.

It is a great mistake to consider Wilkie as a comic painter, in which light he is generally regarded by the public on both sides of the Atlantic. When they are standing before his pictures, they seem to feel themselves bound to be moved to laughter by them, as they would by a comedy or a farce; and without this, they do not show their taste; whereas laughter seems to me to be the very last sensation these works are adapted to call forth.

Speaking of the best and most characteristic of them, I would say, that scarcely any compositions of the art, in whatever class, are calculated to excite a greater variety of deep and serious feelings; feelings, it is true, so uniformly tempered and modified by a calm and delightful satisfaction, that they can scarcely be considered without calling up a smile to the countenance. But the smile arising from inward delight is as different from the laughter excited by strangeness and drollery as any one thing can be from another. It is, in fact, the very essence of Wilkie’s pictures, that there is literally nothing strange, and consequently nothing droll and laughter-moving about them.

From the works of no one English artist have I received so much pure and unmixed pleasure and instruction as I have from those of Sir David Wilkie. He differs from all the great old masters, inasmuch as I think he possesses more vigor of pencil, and more natural and characteristic truth of expression than any of them. His style cannot, indeed, be said to possess the airy and enchanting graces of Claude, or the classic power and beauty of the Poussins, or the delicious sweetness of Paul Potter, or the sunny brightness of Wynants, or the elegant warmth of Both, or the delightfully rural and country-fied air of Hobbima. In fact, he has no peculiar or distinguishing style of his own; and this is his great and characteristic beauty. There is nothing in his pictures but what belongs positively and exclusively to the scene they profess to represent. When any of the above qualities are required in his pictures, they are sure to be found there; not because they are part of his style, but because they are part of Nature’s, in the circumstances under which he is representing her. The artist never obtrudes himself to share with nature the admiration of the spectator. And this is a very rare and admirable quality to possess in these days of pretence and affectation; when subject is usually but a secondary consideration, and is kept in submission to the display of style, manner, and what is called effect.