The Village Holiday
| The Village Holiday | |
|---|---|
_-_The_Village_Holiday_-_N00122_-_National_Gallery.jpg) | |
| Artist | David Wilkie |
| Year | 1811 |
| Type | Oil on canvas, genre painting |
| Dimensions | 127.6 cm × 94 cm (50.2 in × 37 in) |
| Location | Tate 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 of the Tate Collection, 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] It is currently on loan to the National Gallery to celebration the institution's bicentenary.[4]
References
Bibliography
- 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.