A collection of letters related to the English painter Sir David Wilkie.

David Wilkie (1785-1841) was a genre and portrait painter who gained enormous popularity in his own lifetime through his renderings of rural life and people. Wilkie was born in Scotland and developed a love of art at a very young age. Two of Wilkie's paintings that exemplify his focus on rural subjects are Pitlessie Fair (1804) and Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo (1822). In the mid-1820s Wilkie's style underwent a dramatic shift, progressing from his early genre style to one that contained elements of Romantic boldness. In 1830, Wilkie was appointed painter in ordinary to William IV, King of England, a job previously held by Sir Thomas Lawrence; he was honored with a knighthood in 1836. Wilkie traveled to the Holy Land in 1840 and but died during the ship's return journey. His burial at sea is memorialized in Joseph Mallord William Turner's painting titled, Peace: Burial at Sea.

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