DOMESTIC subject, or genre, painting in England may be said to have originated with Hogarth, but it made slow progress after his death till the commencement of the nineteenth century. Historic pictures of a large size were neither popular nor profitable. Corporate bodies did not care to spend money on the adornment of their guild halls, and ordinary householders had no room for large pictures. Englishmen are essentially domestic, and pictures small enough to hang in small houses, and illustrative of home life, suit their necessities, and appeal to their feelings far more strongly than vast canvases representing battles or sacred histories. In genre painting the Dutch school has ever been prominent; to it we doubtless owe much of the popularity of this branch of art in England, where our painters have chosen familiar subjects, without descending to the coarse or sensual incidents in which some old Dutch artists delighted. The genre painters of this country have mainly drawn their subjects from our national poets and prose writers and the every-day life of Englishmen, sometimes verging on the side of triviality, but on the whole including pleasing works, which, as it has been well said, "bear the same relation to historic art as the tale or novel does to history."
DAVID WILKIE (1785—1841) was born in his father's manse at Cults, Fifeshire. It was fully intended that Wilkie should follow in his father's steps, and become a minister of the Scottish Kirk, but it was not to be so. He was placed, at his own earnest desire, in the Trustees' Academy, at Edinburgh, and there in 1803 justified the wisdom of this choice by gaining the ten-guinea premium for the best painting of the time, the subject being Callisto in the Baths of Diana. Next year young Wilkie visited his home, and painted Piltassie Fair, which he sold for £25. He painted portraits, and with the money thus acquired went to London in 1805. Having entered himself as a student at the Academy, Wilkie soon attracted attention by the Village Politicians, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806. One hundred of his paintings appeared from time to time on the Academy walls; each succeeding early work added to its author's fame. All his earlier works were genre pictures. His favourite subjects are shown in The Blind Fiddler, Card-Players, The Rent Day, The Jew's Harp, The Cut Finger, The Village Festival, Blindman's Buff, The Letter of Introduction, Duncan Gray, The Penny Wedding, Reading the Will, The Parish Beadle, and The Chelsea Pensioners, the last painted for the Duke of Wellington. Wilkie was elected A.R.A. in 1809, and a full member in 1811. He went abroad in 1814, and again in 1825, when he visited Germany, Italy, and Spain. The study of the old masters, especially Correggio, Rembrandt, and Velazquez, had a marked effect on Wilkie, who changed both his style and subjects. He forsook genre for history and portraiture, and substituted a light effective style of handling for the careful execution of his earlier works. John Knox Preaching (National Gallery) is a good specimen of this second period of Wilkie's art. He succeeded Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830 as Painter in Ordinary to the King, and was knighted six years later. In 1840 Wilkie visited the East, and painted the portrait of the Sultan Abdul Medjid. Next year, whilst far from home, on board a steamer off Gibraltar, he died, and found a grave in the sea. There are eleven of his pictures in the National Gallery. Her Majesty possesses most of the pictures painted by Wilkie in Spain, such as The Guerilla Council of War, and The Maid of Saragossa. Another Spanish picture, painted in England, is Two Spanish Monks in the Cathedral of Toledo, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne. In it we notice the painting of the hands, which are full of life and action, a characteristic in which Wilkie excelled. "His early art certainly made a great impression on the English school, showing how Dutch art might be nationalized, and story and sentiment added to scenes of common life treated with truth and individuality. As to his middle time, such pictures as the John Knox also had their influence on the school, and the new mode of execution as supported by Wilkie's authority, a very evil influence, bringing discredit upon English pictures as entirely wanting in permanency. His methods and the pigments he used were soon discarded in England, but at the time they influenced, and have continued to influence, his countrymen long after his death." (Redgrave.)
WILLIAM FREDERICK WITHERINGTON (1785—1865) combined landscape and subject painting in his art. He exhibited his first picture, Tintern Abbey, in 1811, and his succeeding works were principally landscapes and figure subjects in combination. Witherington was elected A.R.A. in 1830, and became a full member ten years later. Favourable specimens of his thoroughly English and pleasing pictures are The Stepping Stones and The Hop Garland in the National Gallery, and The Hop Garden in the Sheepshanks Collection at South Kensington.
ABRAHAM COOPER (1787—1868), the son of an inn-keeper, was born in London, and early showed singular skill with his pencil. The inn stables furnished his first and favoured subjects, and the portrait of a favourite horse belonging to Sir Henry Meux gained him his first patron. In 1814 Cooper exhibited at the British Institution Tam o'Shanter, which was purchased by the Duke of Marlborough. In 1817 The Battle of Marston Moor secured his election as an Associate of the Academy: he became a R.A. in 1820. There is little variety in the subjects of this painter's works. The best known are The Pride of the Desert, Hawking in the Olden Time, The Dead Trooper, Richard I. and Saladin at the Battle of Ascalon, and Bothwell's Seizure of Mary, Queen of Scots.
WILLIAM MULREADY (1786—1863), the ablest genre painter in England except Wilkie, was born at Ennis, in the County Clare. Although his works are familiar to most of us as household words, few details of his life are known. We know that his father was a maker of leather-breeches, and that he came to London with his son when the latter was about five years old. The child is said to have shown very early the artistic power which was in him. He sat as a model for Solomon to John Graham, who was illustrating Macklin's Bible and probably the surroundings of the studio stimulated young Mulready's artistic instincts. By the recommendation of Banks, the sculptor, he gained entrance to the Academy Schools; at the age of fifteen he required no further pecuniary aid from his parents. Mulready worked in the Academy Schools, as he worked through life, with all his heart and soul. He declared he always painted as though for a prize, and that when he had begun his career in the world he tried his hand at everything, "from a caricature to a panorama." He was a teacher all his life, and this accounts, perhaps, for the careful completeness of his pictures. Mulready married when very young, and did not secure happiness. He began by painting landscapes, but in 1807 produced Old Kasper, from Southey's poem of "The Battle of Blenheim," his first subject picture. The Rattle appeared a year later, and marked advance. Both pictures bear evidence that their author had studied the Dutch masters. In 1815 Mulready was chosen A.R.A., but before his name could appear in the catalogue he had attained to the rank of a full member. This was in 1816, when he exhibited The Fight interrupted (Sheepshanks Collection). From this time he was a popular favourite, and his pictures, of which he exhibited on an average scarcely two a year, were eagerly looked for. We may specify The Wolf and the Lamb, The Last in, Fair Time, Crossing the Ford, The Young Brother, The Butt, Giving a Bite, Choosing the Wedding Gown, and The Toyseller (all in the National Gallery or in the South Kensington Museum). "With the exception perhaps of some slight deterioration in his colouring, which of late years was obtrusively purple, he was in the enjoyment of the full powers of his great abilities for upwards of half a century. * * * He was distinguished by the excellence of his life studies, three of which in red and black chalks, presented by the Society of Arts, are in the Gallery." (National Gallery Catalogue.)
ALEXANDER FRASER (1786—1865), a native of Edinburgh, exhibited his first picture, The Green Stall, in 1810. Having settled in London, he became an assistant to his countryman Wilkie, and for twenty years painted the still-life details of Wilkie's pictures. The influence of his master's art is visible in Fraser's pictures, which are usually founded upon incidents and scenes in Scotland, as, for example, Interior of a Highland Cottage (National Gallery) and Sir Walter Scott dining with one of the Blue-gown Beggars of Edinburgh. Other examples are The Cobbler at Lunch, The Blackbird and his Tutor, and The Village Sign-painter.