Letter from David Wilkie, London, to Sir George Beaumont, 1823 February 14 : autograph manuscript signed.

Discussing qualities of color and surface in paintings and thanking him for his opinions on these subjects; saying "Coldness of tone and smoothness and dryness of surface have certainly what you urge as the surest proof of inferiority.The want of the appearance of a monied value and that of their actually never selling for so much as richly painted pictures is quite conclusive. I only wish that such arguments as you have used and the authoritys you have quoted would have their due weight upon those who guide if not the taste of the public at least the taste of artists upon this point. I mean those who paint large pictures for the Exhibition. The decline of all schools of colouring appear to be into whiteness and into those corresponding tints of commonplace chilliness that can alone harmonize with white. That appears to throw a damp upon every generous feeling and dispel alike poetry and enthusiasm;" pointing out "another defect very prevalent of late among artists in the treatment of their pictures...that of the want of Breadth or in other words a perpetual division and subdivision of parts to give what they call space, and a constant disturbing and torturing of everything whether in light or in shadow by a niggling touch to produce feelings of subject;" adding he has "...studying much both from such of the old masters such as Rembrandt and Cuyp, as well as by repeated experiments to try what the great masters succeeded in so well namely that power by which the chief objects and even the minute finishing of parts tell over every thing that is meant to be subordinate in their picture. Sir Joshua had this remarkably and could even make the features of the face tell over every thing however strongly painted - I find that repose and breadth in the shaddows and half tints do a great deal towards it. Zoffani's [sic] figures in your pictures derive great consequence from this, and I find those who have studied light and shaddow the more never appear to fail in it;" expressing his hope that he will see Sir George and Lady Beaumont in London when they are next in Town and that he might bring with him paintings which he may have done from the studies he made in Italy.