大卫·威尔基认领

Wilkie visited Sir Walter Scott and his family at their country home of Abbotsford in 1817. Scott is seated as though he is about to relate a story to the gathering of family and friends. Wilkie commented on the 'good humour and merriment' of everyone in the party. He exercised artistic licence, depicting Scott's daughters as bare footed country milkmaids, but also included a realistic portrayal of Scott's highland dog, a present from the Laird of Glengary. The landscape background recalls the Tweed Valley, with a distant view of Melrose. Painted on panel the picture has the character of an oil sketch.

This painting was based on sketches that Wilkie made around 1815 during a retreat to the Wiltshire countryside from his permanent home in London. It is believed to show a scene at Fisherton Delamere, near Salisbury. Shortly before the painting was exhibited at the British Institution in 1817, he wrote to the great art patron and amateur landscape painter Sir George Beaumont. Wilkie asserted that although landscape painting was entirely new to him, the picture was done with the sole object of teaching himself how to ‘paint an out-door scene with facility’. Wilkie was a great admirer of seventeenth century Dutch landscapes, and this practical scene of work and nature recalls the paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema, especially in the inclusion of the water-wheel motif.