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The Village Holiday

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The Village Holiday
ArtistDavid Wilkie
Year1811
TypeOil on canvas, genre painting
Dimensions127.6 cm × 94 cm (50.2 in × 37 in)
LocationTate Britain, London

The Village Holiday is an 1811 genre painting by the British artist David Wilkie. It depicts a scene outside an ale house, and was originally titled The Public House Door. Its final title is a misnomer, as it in fact depicts an inn then on the outskirts of London at Paddington.[1] The Scottish-born London-based artist made his name with such narrative genre pieces before later turning to portraits and history paintings on a greater scale. Stylistically it references the seventeenth century genre works of the Dutch Old Master David Teniers the Younger.[2]

Begun in 1809, it was not completed until two years earlier. It was the centrepiece of a solo art exhibition Wilkie staged in 1812.[3] Today the painting is in the collection of the Tate Britain in Pimlico, having been purchased for the National Gallery in 1824.[4] It was acquired as part of the collection of John Julius Angerstein and was therefore the only work of a living artist to feature in the initial National Gallery after its establishment.[5]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Noon & Bann p.172
  2. ^ Solkin p.153
  3. ^ Tromans p.14
  4. ^ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wilkie-the-village-holiday-n00122
  5. ^ Noon & Bann p.172

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Noon, Patrick & Bann, Stephen. Constable to Delacroix: British Art and the French Romantics. Tate, 2003.
  • Solkin, David H. Painting Out of the Ordinary: Modernity and the Art of Everyday Life in Early Nineteenth-century Britain. Yale University Press, 2009.
  • Tromans, Nicholas. David Wilkie: The People's Painter. Edinburgh University Press, 2007.