Sketch of a head for 'The Rabbit on the Wall'

Wilkie's 1816 sketch of a head for The Rabbit on the Wall is a preparatory study for a genre painting depicting the popular party trick of making rabbit shadow-puppets on a wall — one of his characteristic subjects combining domestic entertainment with precise psychological observation. Wilkie was the leading genre painter in Britain in the early nineteenth century, his combination of Dutch and Flemish compositional tradition with Scottish subject matter and social observation making him enormously popular with royal and aristocratic patrons. His preliminary sketches reveal the same careful observation of specific faces and expressions that characterized his finished paintings, the preparatory process as attentive to individual character as the final composition.

Wilkie's oil sketch on canvas shows his direct, spontaneous preparatory technique, capturing the expression and character of the head with rapid, confident brushwork that reveals his working process.