Sir David Wilkie RA, Guess My Name, ca. 1821.
Pen and ink on cream wove paper. 110 mm x 85 mm. © Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London.
This image is released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND
To licence this image for commercial purposes, contact our Picture Library at picturelibrary@royalacademy.org.uk
Sir David Wilkie RA, Guess My Name, ca. 1821.
Pen and ink on cream wove paper. 110 mm x 85 mm. © Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photographer: John Hammond.
This image is not available to download. To licence this image for commercial purposes, contact our Picture Library at picturelibrary@royalacademy.org.uk
Guess My Name, ca. 1821
Sir David Wilkie RA (1785 - 1841)
RA Collection: Art
This drawing shows an alternative version of the scene depicted in David Wilkie's painting 'Guess My Name' (1821; private collection). In the painting the questioner is a young woman holding her hands over the eyes of a young man. In this drawing the protagonists are replaced by a young boy, and an older woman, presumably a relative. On the left is a small child and another woman, rising from her seat to see the guest.
Wilkie's biographer, Allan Cunningham, noted that the artist developed this composition as 'an after subject' while he was at work on his 'great national work', 'The Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Gazette'.
These drawings by Sir David Wilkie are all mounted in an album of studies probably put together by the artist's brother. According to the artist and Royal Academy librarian Solomon Hart 'they are a portion of a series of sketches of pictures, which he [Wilkie] from time to time sent to a brother, an officer in the Indian Army. He, it seems, used to give them to his brother-officers' children, who bedaubed them with common watercolours. Such as escaped I had the good fortune to acquire for the Academy, from a sister of some of these juvenile artists' (Alexander Brodie ed., The Reminiscences of Solomon Alexander Hart R.A., London, 1882, p.66)
Included in the album are sketches relating to some of Wilkie's best-known works including 'The Penny Wedding' (1818; Royal collection), 'The Breakfast' (1817; Private collection) and 'Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo' (1818-22, Apsley House).
Object details
110 mm x 85 mm
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