Kenneth Roy
Why is Roseanna’s
Catholicism
an issue?
Islay McLeod
Pic of the day
Alison Prince
Oh, for a crack or two
appearing in the
worship of purchase
The Cafe
The really offensive verse
Andrew Hook
The dogma of
public bad, private good
is well past its sell-by
George Gunn
In defence of Edwin Morgan
Bob Cant
Tom Johnston
and Jimmy Reid:
Best first ministers
John Cameron
Tutu on sexuality
Barbara Millar
There is a queer
Scotchman come.
His name is Wilkie
Rear Window
Anne-Marie McManus
23.06.11
No. 421
Rear Window
Springburn
Sunday 25 April
Shattered on account of staying up all night thinking. Keep to myself on the journey, fall asleep on the train, wake up with someone telling me we have arrived in Glasgow. I go home to shitty Springburn and straight to bed.
Monday 6 May
Bank Holiday Monday, which I hate. A Bank Holiday Monday is just a continuation of Sunday, which I also hate.
Tuesday 7 May
Yesterday is over at last. I take wee Stuart to school and head for the shopping centre. Bump into someone who stays beside me. She’s being bullied by these young boys who sit in her close and drink, so she’s moving next week.
Friday 10 May
Go out with Marie (Celtic Club). We think we’ve got away with it (as we are barred – sine die
Monday 13 May
Take the wean to school and get his report card. It seems my boy is good at most things and socially is quite advanced. This must be a good sign, as he is the youngest in his class.
Saturday 18 May
A party at Marie’s. It’s going great and most of us are drunk. Then about 12.30am, some young boys – about 18 years old – barge their way into the house, and into the kitchen, and start chopping lines of coke. The guy upstairs is heavy, so he comes down and chases them.
Saturday 25 May
The dreaded day: I have now turned 28. Two years away from 30: a frightening thought. I only get four birthday cards and one present, but I’m not bothered. Being nearly 30 isn’t something to celebrate. I drink a litre bottle of vodka tonight. To forget.
Anne-Marie McManus
SR Extra
Why don’t we support our young entrepreneurs?, asks Neil McLennan
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Three minutes to slog it out: the polar waste of public discourse
Click here
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There is a queer
Scotchman come.
His name is Wilkie
Barbara Millar’s person of the week
He was a very good friend, a fact acknowledged by Sir Walter Scott in a letter in 1829, thanking him for agreeing to provide sketches to be engraved in the Magnum Opus edition of the Waverley novels.
‘You, who are beset by the sin of modesty,’ Scott wrote, ‘will be least of all men aware what a tower of strength your name must be in a work of this nature, which, if successful, will go a great way to counterbalance some very severe losses which I sustained two or three years since by the failure of Constable’s house and Hurst and Robinson’s in London’.
The friend Scott addressed had also suffered when the publishing firm of Hurst and Robinson collapsed and immediately wrote back, assuring Scott he would be delighted ‘to assist in the illustrations of the great work which we all hope may lighten or remove that load of troubles by which your noble spirit is at this time beset’. And, he added, he was merely repaying ‘a debt of obligation which you yourself have laid upon me when you took me up and claimed me, the humble painter of domestic sorrow, as your countryman’.
Scott’s friend – David Wilkie – was born in 1785, the third son of the third wife of the parish minister at Cults in Fife. He attended school in the nearby village of Pitlessie where education was very informal and the young boy spent much of his time making likenesses of his fellow pupils and village characters, covering the margins of his books with drawings. He drew on any surface he could find, with anything that would make a mark, his subjects always the people he knew and could closely observe.
His father and grandfather – a miller – did not believe art was a respectable profession but Wilkie’s mother appreciated and understood her son’s talent, encouraging him, at the age of 14, to go to Edinburgh to apply for entrance to the Trustees’ Academy. He would have been rejected, had it not been for the timely intervention of the Earl of Leven, and Wilkie was duly admitted, lodging in a bare room, two flights up, in Nicolson Street. He worked hard, frequently using himself as a model, but also studying the characters who frequented the Grassmarket and the High Street. He began to collect prints and etchings of the Dutch masters and was also influenced by David Allan, an artist who helped to establish the tradition of Scottish history painting, and by Allan Ramsay’s ‘The Gentle Shepherd’.
John Graham, master of the Trustees’ Academy, wrote to Wilkie’s father when the young man left the Academy in 1804: ‘He is capable of carrying through the most elevated and elegant part of his art…the most delicacy required in the execution of a subject, the more successful he will be’.
After five years in Edinburgh, Wilkie returned to Cults to decide what to do next. He started work on Pitlessie Fair, making drawings of the village and its people to populate his canvas with over 140 characters. He made drawings in the kirk on the Sabbath, to the scandal of the congregation – even his father was embarrassed when Wilkie painted him into the picture, talking to the publican. He sold the painting for £25 and promptly moved to London, to enrol at the Royal Academy school.
London was to be his base for the rest of his career, although the Scottish intellectual tradition remained his point of reference. His arrival in London was described by a fellow pupil: ‘There is a new, tall, pale, queer Scotchman come, an odd fellow, but there is something in him. He is called Wilkie’.
He began to receive commissions, receiving 50 guineas and £150 respectively for the ‘Blind Fiddler’ and ‘Rent Day’. But when his painting ‘Village Politician’ went on show at the Royal Academy in 1806, it created a sensation and Wilkie was hailed as a genius. His growing public acclaim was followed by professional recognition. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1809, when he was only 24, and a full academician two years later. In that year he also opened an exhibition of his collected works in London – but that was not successful and resulted in a considerable personal financial loss.
In 1814 he went on his first visit to the continent, visiting Paris armed with sketchbooks in which he made studies of local costumes, views of the city and copies of paintings – especially those from the Dutch school – in the Louvre. In 1816 he went to Amsterdam and Antwerp. During this period he produced ‘Blind Man’s Buff’, bought by the Prince Regent, ‘The Letter of Introduction’ and ‘The Penny Wedding’, again bought by the Prince, now George IV. In 1822 he produced ‘Chelsea Pensioners reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo’, for which the Duke of Wellington paid him £1,200 guineas in cash, remarking that he did not want his banker to know what a damn fool he was.
Wilkie’s reputation was at its zenith. His paintings attracted crowds at the Royal Academy and, still only in his mid-30s, he became as popular as J M W Turner. He returned to Scotland at regular intervals, to refresh his memory, to carry out portraits and to make studies from nature, recalling John Graham’s earlier advice ‘never to paint your principal work without you have nature before you’. He went to the west coast, making sketches of the landscape and local characters, returning via Dunkeld and Blair Atholl and also visiting Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, where he made sketches for the group portrait of the Scott family.
In 1822 he also started work on a large oil painting to commemorate the visit of George IV to Edinburgh and on an ambitious painting of John Knox’s arrival at Holyrood. Both pictures caused him major problems and he had to return north on several occasions to study the architectural and landscape backgrounds. Wilkie’s health suffered badly from the problems posed by these two paintings and, in 1824, he left for a recuperative trip to Italy via the Alps.
His stay in Italy opened his eyes to the clarity of fresco painting and he copied some of the works, using chalk and watercolours. While he was in Rome he was also honoured with a dinner given by Scottish artists and collectors, presided over by the Duke of Hamilton. Before returning to Britain he went on to Spain, to see the works of Velasquez and Murillo, and in 1829 he exhibited three historical Spanish canvases at the Royal Academy, together with some of his Italian paintings.
The critics hated his new style, condemning the bold brushstrokes and vivid colours. One opined: ‘We lament his change of style. He was wrong to risk his settled reputation by adopting another style, since in his own he was without a rival, and in that of his adoption, he has many superiors’. Nevertheless, the 1830s proved to be a prolific time for Wilkie.
In 1830 he was appointed principal painter-in-ordinary to the king and a number of official portrait commissions followed. In 1836 he was knighted. He also continued to develop the specifically Scottish aspects of his work, including illustrations to the poems and songs of Robert Burns, which culminated in ‘The Cotters’ Saturday Night’ in 1837.
In the summer of 1840 he decided to visit the Middle East, not only to find new subject matter, but also to improve his failing health. Some of his finest watercolours were painted during this last nine months of his life. He travelled across Europe – to Constantinople, where he made more than 60 sketches, and on to the Holy Land, drawing travellers and camels on the way.
After a short stay in Alexandria, he set sail for Malta, but died at sea off Gibraltar in June 1841 – 170 years ago. The ship turned back, but the authorities refused to allow his body to be landed. The entry in the ship’s log for that day reads: ‘8.30pm. Stopped engines and committed to the deep the body of Sir David Wilkie’.
His great Royal Academy rival, Turner, commemorated this event in one of his most celebrated paintings ‘Peace, Burial at Sea’. When someone remarked that the sail of the ship, silhouetted against the sunset sky, was too black, Turner replied that he ‘could not paint it black enough’.
Barbara Millar is a freelance journalist and tour guide
23.06.11
No. 421
Rear WindowShattered on account of staying up all night thinking. Keep to myself on the journey, fall asleep on the train, wake up with someone telling me we have arrived in Glasgow. I go home to shitty Springburn and straight to bed.
Bank Holiday Monday, which I hate. A Bank Holiday Monday is just a continuation of Sunday, which I also hate.
Yesterday is over at last. I take wee Stuart to school and head for the shopping centre. Bump into someone who stays beside me. She’s being bullied by these young boys who sit in her close and drink, so she’s moving next week.
Go out with Marie (Celtic Club). We think we’ve got away with it (as we are barred – sine die
Take the wean to school and get his report card. It seems my boy is good at most things and socially is quite advanced. This must be a good sign, as he is the youngest in his class.
A party at Marie’s. It’s going great and most of us are drunk. Then about 12.30am, some young boys – about 18 years old – barge their way into the house, and into the kitchen, and start chopping lines of coke. The guy upstairs is heavy, so he comes down and chases them.
The dreaded day: I have now turned 28. Two years away from 30: a frightening thought. I only get four birthday cards and one present, but I’m not bothered. Being nearly 30 isn’t something to celebrate. I drink a litre bottle of vodka tonight. To forget.
Click here
Click here
He was a very good friend, a fact acknowledged by Sir Walter Scott in a letter in 1829, thanking him for agreeing to provide sketches to be engraved in the Magnum Opus edition of the Waverley novels.
‘You, who are beset by the sin of modesty,’ Scott wrote, ‘will be least of all men aware what a tower of strength your name must be in a work of this nature, which, if successful, will go a great way to counterbalance some very severe losses which I sustained two or three years since by the failure of Constable’s house and Hurst and Robinson’s in London’.
The friend Scott addressed had also suffered when the publishing firm of Hurst and Robinson collapsed and immediately wrote back, assuring Scott he would be delighted ‘to assist in the illustrations of the great work which we all hope may lighten or remove that load of troubles by which your noble spirit is at this time beset’. And, he added, he was merely repaying ‘a debt of obligation which you yourself have laid upon me when you took me up and claimed me, the humble painter of domestic sorrow, as your countryman’.
Scott’s friend – David Wilkie – was born in 1785, the third son of the third wife of the parish minister at Cults in Fife. He attended school in the nearby village of Pitlessie where education was very informal and the young boy spent much of his time making likenesses of his fellow pupils and village characters, covering the margins of his books with drawings. He drew on any surface he could find, with anything that would make a mark, his subjects always the people he knew and could closely observe.
His father and grandfather – a miller – did not believe art was a respectable profession but Wilkie’s mother appreciated and understood her son’s talent, encouraging him, at the age of 14, to go to Edinburgh to apply for entrance to the Trustees’ Academy. He would have been rejected, had it not been for the timely intervention of the Earl of Leven, and Wilkie was duly admitted, lodging in a bare room, two flights up, in Nicolson Street. He worked hard, frequently using himself as a model, but also studying the characters who frequented the Grassmarket and the High Street. He began to collect prints and etchings of the Dutch masters and was also influenced by David Allan, an artist who helped to establish the tradition of Scottish history painting, and by Allan Ramsay’s ‘The Gentle Shepherd’.
John Graham, master of the Trustees’ Academy, wrote to Wilkie’s father when the young man left the Academy in 1804: ‘He is capable of carrying through the most elevated and elegant part of his art…the most delicacy required in the execution of a subject, the more successful he will be’.
After five years in Edinburgh, Wilkie returned to Cults to decide what to do next. He started work on Pitlessie Fair, making drawings of the village and its people to populate his canvas with over 140 characters. He made drawings in the kirk on the Sabbath, to the scandal of the congregation – even his father was embarrassed when Wilkie painted him into the picture, talking to the publican. He sold the painting for £25 and promptly moved to London, to enrol at the Royal Academy school.
London was to be his base for the rest of his career, although the Scottish intellectual tradition remained his point of reference. His arrival in London was described by a fellow pupil: ‘There is a new, tall, pale, queer Scotchman come, an odd fellow, but there is something in him. He is called Wilkie’.
He began to receive commissions, receiving 50 guineas and £150 respectively for the ‘Blind Fiddler’ and ‘Rent Day’. But when his painting ‘Village Politician’ went on show at the Royal Academy in 1806, it created a sensation and Wilkie was hailed as a genius. His growing public acclaim was followed by professional recognition. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1809, when he was only 24, and a full academician two years later. In that year he also opened an exhibition of his collected works in London – but that was not successful and resulted in a considerable personal financial loss.
In 1814 he went on his first visit to the continent, visiting Paris armed with sketchbooks in which he made studies of local costumes, views of the city and copies of paintings – especially those from the Dutch school – in the Louvre. In 1816 he went to Amsterdam and Antwerp. During this period he produced ‘Blind Man’s Buff’, bought by the Prince Regent, ‘The Letter of Introduction’ and ‘The Penny Wedding’, again bought by the Prince, now George IV. In 1822 he produced ‘Chelsea Pensioners reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo’, for which the Duke of Wellington paid him £1,200 guineas in cash, remarking that he did not want his banker to know what a damn fool he was.
Wilkie’s reputation was at its zenith. His paintings attracted crowds at the Royal Academy and, still only in his mid-30s, he became as popular as J M W Turner. He returned to Scotland at regular intervals, to refresh his memory, to carry out portraits and to make studies from nature, recalling John Graham’s earlier advice ‘never to paint your principal work without you have nature before you’. He went to the west coast, making sketches of the landscape and local characters, returning via Dunkeld and Blair Atholl and also visiting Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, where he made sketches for the group portrait of the Scott family.
In 1822 he also started work on a large oil painting to commemorate the visit of George IV to Edinburgh and on an ambitious painting of John Knox’s arrival at Holyrood. Both pictures caused him major problems and he had to return north on several occasions to study the architectural and landscape backgrounds. Wilkie’s health suffered badly from the problems posed by these two paintings and, in 1824, he left for a recuperative trip to Italy via the Alps.
His stay in Italy opened his eyes to the clarity of fresco painting and he copied some of the works, using chalk and watercolours. While he was in Rome he was also honoured with a dinner given by Scottish artists and collectors, presided over by the Duke of Hamilton. Before returning to Britain he went on to Spain, to see the works of Velasquez and Murillo, and in 1829 he exhibited three historical Spanish canvases at the Royal Academy, together with some of his Italian paintings.
The critics hated his new style, condemning the bold brushstrokes and vivid colours. One opined: ‘We lament his change of style. He was wrong to risk his settled reputation by adopting another style, since in his own he was without a rival, and in that of his adoption, he has many superiors’. Nevertheless, the 1830s proved to be a prolific time for Wilkie.
In 1830 he was appointed principal painter-in-ordinary to the king and a number of official portrait commissions followed. In 1836 he was knighted. He also continued to develop the specifically Scottish aspects of his work, including illustrations to the poems and songs of Robert Burns, which culminated in ‘The Cotters’ Saturday Night’ in 1837.
In the summer of 1840 he decided to visit the Middle East, not only to find new subject matter, but also to improve his failing health. Some of his finest watercolours were painted during this last nine months of his life. He travelled across Europe – to Constantinople, where he made more than 60 sketches, and on to the Holy Land, drawing travellers and camels on the way.
After a short stay in Alexandria, he set sail for Malta, but died at sea off Gibraltar in June 1841 – 170 years ago. The ship turned back, but the authorities refused to allow his body to be landed. The entry in the ship’s log for that day reads: ‘8.30pm. Stopped engines and committed to the deep the body of Sir David Wilkie’.
His great Royal Academy rival, Turner, commemorated this event in one of his most celebrated paintings ‘Peace, Burial at Sea’. When someone remarked that the sail of the ship, silhouetted against the sunset sky, was too black, Turner replied that he ‘could not paint it black enough’.
