David Wilkie’s ‘A Young Woman Kneeling at a Prayer Desk’ collected by National Gallery

LONDON, Nov. 23 (People’s Daily Online)—— Famous painting “A Young Woman Kneeling at a Prayer Desk”, which was thought to be lost for more than 140 years, goes on display at the National Gallery, London recently. It was London-based art dealer Ben Elwes who recognised the painting as a Wilkie when he saw it in the catalogue for a sale in New York.

“A Young Woman Kneeling at a Prayer Desk” by Scottish artist Sir David Wilkie was discovered in the US after last being heard of in 1872, when it was put up for sale by a relative of the 1st Earl Mulgrave.

Wilkie is often called the first truly international British artist, and “A Young Woman Kneeling at a Prayer Desk” will enhance the National Gallery’s collection of British painting in the nineteenth century by artists who have themselves been highly influential in the development of European painting. It will also further emphasise the great inspiration which British painters of this period drew from the Old Masters. It is just the second Scottish work to enter the National Gallery collection (the first being The Archers by Raeburn, acquired in 2001).

Dr Susan Foister, Deputy Director and Curator of British Paintings says, “The painting vividly shows off Wilkie’s outstanding painterly powers to concentrated effect within its small compass. The young subject of the painting is depicted kneeling at an altar, but she has turned her face directly to us. In this way Wilkie creates a moment of small drama, the sense of discovering, even intruding on, the girl at her private prayers. The pose does not merely enable her features to be clearly identifiable to those who knew her, it also creates a moving connection to the viewer, which is emphasised by the dramatic illumination of her face and figure, her solemn expression and the accuracy and delicacy with which Wilkie suggests the face of a young girl poised between childhood and adulthood.”

“A Young Woman Kneeling at a Prayer Desk” goes on display in Room 34 of the National Gallery alongside works by Turner, Constable, Gainsborough and Reynolds.