Sancho Panza in the Days of his Youth

Drawing upon skills he honed as a genre painter, David Wilkie turned his power of observation of the details of everyday life and ability to depict emotion toward the rarified subject matter of history and literary pictures, infusing them with elements of common human experience to which his audiences could relate. He envisions this scene, loosely drawn from the romance of Don Quixote, as a quiet moment of interaction between a mother and her child. With its depth of glazing, long flowing contours and sweeping brushwork, Sancho Panza in the Days of his Youth displays the lush, painterly style the artist developed on an extended visit to Spain in 1827-28.