The Spanish Posada: A Guerilla Council of War

David Wilkie's The Spanish Posada: A Guerilla Council of War of 1828, painted during his Spanish journey, depicts the informal military councils that characterized Spanish guerrilla resistance to French occupation — irregular commanders gathered at a tavern-inn planning their next operations with the practical directness of men who had learned warfare by practice rather than theory. The subject combined Wilkie's continuing interest in Spanish historical subjects with his genre painter's attention to the social dynamics of a military meeting, the posada's domestic setting contrasting with the serious business of partisan warfare.

Wilkie renders the dark Spanish interior with the warm, Velázquez-influenced palette of his later period. The intense concentration of the guerrilla council and the atmospheric rendering of the posada interior demonstrate his evolution from precise genre painting to a more painterly historical style.