To suffer from the want of discernment on the part of the nobility and
the people, appears to be the fate of artists in this country. It was
not a whit better formerly than it is in our own time. Hogarth had to
sell his pictures by raffle, and Wilson was obliged to retire into
Wales, from its affording cheaper living. The committee of the British
Institution purchased a picture by Gainsborough, for eleven hundred
guineas, and presented it to the National Gallery, as an example of
excellence; yet this very picture hung for years in the artist’s
painting-room without a purchaser; the price was only fifty pounds. In
our own times, says John Burnet, “let us take the case of Sir David
Wilkie as an example; a painter who has founded a school of art unknown
before in this or in any other country--a combination of the invention
of Hogarth with the pictorial excellences of Ostade and Teniers; yet
this artist’s works, on his coming to London in 1804, were exposed in a
shop window at Charing Cross for a few pounds; and a work for which he
could only receive fifteen guineas, was sold the other day for eight
hundred. Do transactions such as these show the taste or discernment of
the public? Lord Mansfield thought thirty pounds a large sum for ‘the
Village Politicians;’ and Sir George Beaumont, as a kind of patronage,
gave Wilkie a commission to paint the picture of ‘the Blind Fiddler,’
and paid him fifty guineas for what would now bring a thousand at a
public sale.[14] It seems, therefore, a fair inference that a discerning
public, or a patronising nobility, are only shown when an artist’s
reputation makes it safe to encourage him.”--_Practical Essays._