Guess My Name
1821
Sir David Wilkie Scottish, 1785–1841
United Kingdom
This drawing is a preparatory study for a genre scene commissioned by a German nobleman in 1820 and shown at the Royal Academy in 1821. Executed in the three-chalk technique, the sheet betrays the influence of Rubens’s drawings, which Wilkie could have seen in Paris in 1814. In a subject of the artist’s own devising, a young woman covers a potential suitor’s eyes, but will he identify her correctly?
Black and red Conté crayon, with graphite, heightened with white chalk on tan laid paper, laid down