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Home | Corson Collection | Biography | Works | Image Collection | Recent Publications | Correspondence | Forthcoming Events | Links | E-texts | Contact The Abbotsford Family (1817)Sir David Wilkie first met Scott in London in 1809 when both dined with the publisher John Murray. He found the writer 'most interesting in conversation' and 'very communicative of the all but universal knowledge he has acquired'. Their paths did not however cross again until October 1817 when Wilkie was invited to Abbotsford during a visit to Scotland. Here he was commissioned by Scott's friend Sir Adam Fergusson to paint the group composition that was to become The Abbotsford Family. He began work immediately, making rapid progress on the picture during the fortnight that he spent as a guest of Scott. The portraits of Lady Scott, Scott's daughters Sophia and Anne, son's Walter and Charles, friend Sir Adam Fergusson, and shepherd Thomas Scott are all taken from life. Scott himself provided Wilkie with a dilemma. He was loath to trouble Scott to sit for a portrait as he knew him to be hard at work on Rob Roy. After several days, however, he perceived that Scott 'always had time for less important purposes' and conquered his scruples. The painting was displayed in the 1818 exhibition at the Royal Academy, but there is evidence that the artist worked upon it subsequently, retouching in particular the portrait of Lady Scott which her husband did not judge to be a good likeness.
Scott later described the painting in a letter to Fergusson of 7 March 1827:
Scott himself (see detail below) is portrayed at full-length, wearing a slate-blue coat, cerise waistcoat, white shirt, black stock, and buff trousers and hat, the costume which, according to a review in Blackwood's Magazine was his customary attire when inspecting his estate. The painting is 10¾ by 14½ inches.
The Scott family appear to have been highly pleased by the painting. Scott wrote to Wilkie that 'I cannot tell you how acceptable the picture has been to all who have seen and how much the relatives of the party honoured (not always easily gratified you know) are delighted with your having commemorated them' (letter of 23 January 1818, Letters, V, 93). Likewise, in a letter to Lady Compton, he referred to is 'a very good picture' by 'this modest and most promising artist' which is 'prodigiously admired by Scotch amateurs at least as a piece of art'.
The Abbotsford Family remained in the Fergusson family until 1895 when it was sold to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It was engraved on four occasions: by W.H. Worthington (1828), Robert Graves (1837), John Smith (1847), and William Greatbach (184-?). Click on the links below to see images of the engravings held by Edinburgh University Library: The full letter to Sir Adam Fergusson descriptive of the painting was published in The Bijou, 1828, along with the engraving by W.H. Worthington. Both may be viewed at the Romantic Anthologies Web Site. Bibliography
Last updated: 3-June-2005
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The
idea which our inimitable Wilkie adopted was to represent
our family group in the garb of South country peasants supposed
to be concerting a merry-making, for which some of the preparations
are seen. The place is the terrace near Kayside [or
'Kaeside', a property added to the Abbotsford estate in 1817],
commanding an extensive view towards the Eildon Hills. 1.
The sitting figure, in the dress of a miller, I believe,
represents Sir Walter Scott author of a few scores of volumes,
and proprietor of Abbotsford. 2. In front, and presenting,
we may suppose, a country wag, addicted to poaching stands
Sir Adam Fergusson, Knight-Keeper of the Regalia of Scotland.
3. In the background is a very handsome old man [Thomas
Scott], upwards of eighty four
years old at the time, painted in his own character of a
shepherd. He used to claim credit for three things unusual
among the South-land shepherds: first, that he had never
been fou [drunk] in
the course of his life; secondly, never had struck a man
in anger; thirdly, that though entrusted with the management
of large sales of stock, he had never lost a penny for his
master by a bad debt. He died soon afterwards, at Abbotsford.
4. 5. 6. Of the three female figures the eldest is the late
regretted mother of the family represented. 5. The young
person most forward in the group is Miss Sophia Charlotte
Scott, now Mrs John Gibson Lockhart, and, 6, her younger
sister Miss Anne Scott. Both are represented as ewe milkers,
with their leglins, or milk pails. 7. On the left hand of
the shepherd, the young man holding a fowling-piece is the
eldest son of Sir Walter, now Captain in the Kings Hussars.
8. The boy is the youngest of the family, now, Charles Scott,
of Brazen Nose College, Oxford. The two dogs were distinguished
favourites of the family. The large one [Maida,
see right] was a stag-hound
of the old Highland breed, and one of the handsomest dogs
that could be found. He was a present from the Chief of Glengarry
to Sir Walter, and was highly valued both on account of his
beauty, his fidelity and the great rarity of the breed. The
other is a little Highland terrier called Ourisk (goblin),
of a particular kind bred in Kintail. It was a present from
the Honourable Mrs Stewart Mackenzie and is a valuable specimen
of a breed which is now also scarce. (Letters,
X, 168-69)
Critical
reaction has been rather more mixed. For Blackwood's Magazine the
portrait might have lacked 'the fine poetical tone' of Sir Henry
Raeburn's 