Sketch for 'Reading the Will'

Reading for the Will (Neue Pinakothek, Munich) was commissioned by Maximilian I, King of Bavaria, and completed in 1820 when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London (no. 151). Wilkie was asked to execute a picture 'as purely English as possible' (letter from Wilkie to Raimbach, 2 July 1818, in N. Tromans, David Wilkie: The People's Painter, Edinburgh, 2007, p. 48). The scene illustrates the moment that the will of a rich man is read to his extended family, favouring his young, and possibly second, wife over all others, including a more elderly lady who is visible in the finished painting sweeping out of the door in disgust. Wilkie was influenced by Hogarth's satirical compositions of the mid-18th Century, which illustrated domestic scenes of downfall and scandal caused by the lure of money and romance.

There is a comparable study for the painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, with the figures in a slightly different formation, and further figure studies are at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the British Museum, London.