1785-1841 British Sir David Wilkie Galleries Wilkie may have inherited his rectitude and tenacity, even his nervous inhibitions, from his father, the minister of his native parish. Though little responsive to schooling, he showed an early inclination towards mimicry that expressed itself in drawings, chiefly of human activity. In these he was influenced by a copy of Allan Ramsay pastoral comedy in verse, the Gentle Shepherd (1725), illustrated by David Allan in 1788. One of the few surviving examples of his early drawings represents a scene from it (c. 1797; Kirkcaldy, Fife, Mus. A.G.). Wilkie cherished the demotic spirit of this book and its illustrations throughout his life.  Related Paintings of Sir David Wilkie :. | Reading the Will | The Blind Fiddler | Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch | distraining for rent | Josephine and the Fortune-Teller |
Related Artists:
charles de brosses
(1709-77). President of the Parlement de Dijon, friend of the philosophes, and in Diderot's words ??une petite t??te gaie, ironique et satiriquee. His learned publications include important work on the origins of language (Traite de la formation m??canique des langues, 1765) and on primitive religion (Du culte des dieux fetiches, 1760). His Lettres familieres crites d Italie en 1739 et 1740, published posthumously in 1799 and much loved by Stendhal, offer a model of personal travel writing, in which detailed accounts of art works and monuments, not always complimentary, or a careful description of Vesuvius, addressed to Buffon, are interspersed with sprightly, enthusiastic accounts of the peculiarities and the aesthetic and sensual pleasures of life in Italy.
Henry Gritten
Australian Landscape artist 1818-1873 was an English/Australian artist. Gritten was the son of a London picture dealer, was born probably in 1817. He studied art and was on friendly terms with David Roberts and other leading artists of the period. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1835, and during the next 10 years 12 of his pictures were hung at its exhibitions. He was a more frequent exhibitor at the British Institution, and had 30 of his pictures hung there between 1836 and 1848. In the latter year he went to the United States and in about 1852 arrived in Australia. He went first to the Bendigo goldfields, but soon resumed painting in Victoria and Tasmania; there is a View of Hobart in 1857 by him at the National Library of Australia at Canberra. He was represented at the first exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Art held at Melbourne in 1870. He died suddenly at Melbourne leaving a widow and four children in poor circumstances. Gritten was quite a capable painter of his period who had a hard struggle in Australia.
SPADA, Lionello
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1576-1622 Italian painter, active mainly in Emilia. His signature was an L placed across a sword [Ital. spada=sword]. His work shows influence of the grand manner of the Carracci, as in The Burning of Heretical Books (San Domenico, Bologna), and of Caravaggio's naturalism, seen in dramatic religious and genre scenes such as The Way to Calvary (Parma). In his late works his manner became softer and warmer under Correggio's influence. An example is The Marriage of St. Catherine (Parma).