Study of a Head for ‘The Rabbit on the Wall’

This study head is directly connected to Wilkie's painting 'The Rabbit on the Wall', a genre scene of children watching shadow puppetry, and represents his systematic preparatory practice of working out individual figures before assembling the final composition. Such head studies — carefully observed from life models — were central to his working method from the beginning of his career, and they testify to the labour behind his apparently spontaneous finished genre scenes. The study combines the informality of a sketch with genuine portraiture-level attention to character.

Wilkie focuses entirely on the facial expression — the eyes tracking the shadow on the wall, the mouth slightly open in the expression of a watching child — with paint applied economically to the broader passages of hair and collar. The head is set against a plain ground that keeps all attention on the observed face.