Sir David Wilkie, 1785 - 1841. Artist

Thomas Phillips painted his fellow Royal Academician David Wilkie in 1811, capturing Scotland's most celebrated genre painter at thirty-six during the period when he was producing the Scottish village scenes that made him famous across Europe. Wilkie's genre paintings — intimate, humorous observations of Scottish rural life — had transformed British painting's relationship with Dutch seventeenth-century tradition. Phillips depicted Wilkie with the informal directness of an artistic peer, suggesting intelligence and observational acuity. The portrait documents the network of professional friendships that constituted the Royal Academy's social world.

Phillips presents the young artist with an alert, intelligent expression that conveys his creative energy. The warm palette and careful attention to the features create an engaging portrait of a fellow artist at the start of his rise to fame.