in the exhibition, but at the close of the year he once more left England; this time for the east, going through Holland and Germany to Constantinople (where he painted a portrait of the young sultan, Abdul Medjid), and thence to Jerusalem, which he reached on 27 Feb. 1841. His letters show that he fully recognised in the Holy Land a further field for artistic inspiration. In April he left Jerusalem on his homeward journey, reaching Alexandria on the 26th. At Alexandria he painted the famous Pacha Mehemet Ali. Then on 26 May he started home once more. But he died suddenly on the morning of 1 June 1841, shortly after leaving Gibraltar, and, on account of the quarantine regulations, was buried at sea in 36° 20߱ north latitude and 6° 42߱ west longitude—an incident which has been magnificently commemorated by the brush of Joseph Mallord William Turner [q. v.]
Wilkie was unmarried. In character he was modest, frugal, and ceremonious, but extremely lovable and highly esteemed by many friends. He began life almost instinctively as a genre painter of the Dutch school; he developed in later life into a history and portrait painter, whose work was largely influenced by his study of art in Italy and Spain. Roughly speaking, his work may be divided into that executed before and after 1825; but there are distinct stages in his development through both of these periods. At the National Gallery a comparison of the ‘Blind Fiddler’ with the ‘Parish Beadle,’ and then of these with the ‘Preaching of Knox’ and ‘Peep-o'Day Boy's Cabin,’ will illustrate the evolution of his manner better than pages of description. His different styles have each their advocates; but it is probable that the best examples of his earlier period will longest retain their popularity. His works have been sympathetically engraved by Burnet, Raimbach, Sharpe, and others.
There is a portrait of Wilkie, by himself, at twenty-nine, in the National Portrait Gallery of London. Another, which represents him in 1840, aged 55, was exhibited at the Guelph Exhibition of 1891 by Colonel David Wilkie. There are two portraits in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery—one by Sir William Beechey, bequeathed by Dr. Hunter of Woodbank, near Largs; and another, presented by the Duke of Buccleuch, of Wilkie and his mother, painted by himself in 1803.
[The standard authority for Wilkie's Life is Allan Cunningham's Biography, 3 vols. 1843. There is also a brief memoir by his engraver, Raimbach, in that writer's Memoirs and Recollections (privately printed), 1843. See also Memoirs of the Life of Collins, 1848; Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon, 1853; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Heaton's Continuation of Cunningham's Lives, vol. iii.; and for an admirable comparison of Wilkie and Hogarth, Hazlitt's Lectures on the Comic Writers, 1841, pp. 274–311.]
WILKIE, WILLIAM (1721–1772), ‘the Scottish Homer,’ son of James Wilkie, a farmer, was born at Echlin, parish of Dalmeny, Midlothian, on 5 Oct. 1721. He was educated at Dalmeny parish school and Edinburgh University, having among his college contemporaries John Home, David Hume, William Robertson, and Adam Smith. His father dying during his curriculum, he succeeded to the unexpired lease of a farm at Fishers' Tryste, near Edinburgh. This he carried on in the interests of his three sisters and himself, prosecuting at the same time his studies for the ministry of the church of Scotland. Licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Linlithgow on 29 May 1745, he combined, while waiting for a charge, the pursuits of literature and scientific agriculture. On 17 May 1753 he was appointed, under the patronage of the Earl of Lauderdale, assistant to John Guthrie, parish minister of Ratho, Midlothian, on whose death in 1756 he became sole incumbent. His learning and his abstracted moods—his occasionally omitting, for instance, to put off his hat before entering the pulpit—somewhat marred the success of his pastorate. In 1759 he was appointed professor of natural philosophy at St. Andrews, where he did sound work, devoting his leisure to successful experiments in moorland farming. Robert Fergusson, one of his students, eulogises him in a memorial eclogue (Fergusson, Poems, p. 29, ed. Grosart). In 1766 the university of St. Andrews conferred on Wilkie the honorary degree of D.D. Subject to ague, he weakened his constitution by excessive clothing and absurd sleeping arrangements. He died on 10 Oct. 1772.
Regarded by his college friends as the ablest of the distinguished students of his day (Mackenzie, Life of John Home), Wilkie continued to impress later contemporaries by his originality, remarkable attainments, and conversational power, and to shock them by his eccentricity and slovenly habits (cf. Lockhart, Life of Scott, v. 25, ed. 1837). Meeting him at Alexander Carlyle's in 1759, Charles Townshend (1725–1767) [q. v.] considered that no man of his acquaintance ‘approached so near the two extremes of a god and a brute’ (Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle, chap. x. p. 394). Credited with parsimony, Wilkie was nevertheless
