The last year has forced us all to examine our own domestic lives. Routines, habits, pleasures and trials – repeated daily and weekly – have been thrown into sharp relief. Whilst modern life gave us variety, lockdown has pushed the domestic front and centre. 

The everyday has been a rich seam for artists across the centuries. Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) was the most significant Scottish advocate of the commonplace. Generations of artists followed suit. Wilkie’s circle and followers did it with profound honesty; in the decades that followed, the familiar became increasingly weighted with sentiment; such mawkishness was dispelled by the Glasgow Boys; push past the Second World War and we are confronted with stark observations in the likes of Oscar Marzaroli’s black and white photography of Glasgow.

What draws us to the subject, artist and viewer alike, is the human presence tied up in the detail. In the best of this work, we aren’t looking at types, but at individuals, with history and hinterland. Sometimes it is relatable - universal even. Or, it is a life that, by the grace of God, isn’t our own.

Genre painting was embraced with enthusiasm by David Wilkie, a pupil of Allan’s. In this exquisitely delicate oil of 1836, that lends this article its title, is an example of such. Wilkie depicts a child, writhing in the arms of a nurse, reaching towards their mother. This isn’t a portrait, but a study of an intimate and fleeting moment. Paintings of parents and their children became more emotional from the mid-18th century, as artists depicted a more tender and playful connection between them. Domestic Life is steeped in the detail of wealth – unlike Wilkie’s earlier works, whose subjects were of altogether humbler origin. However, the title Domestic Life, given by the artist, indicates that it was principally the atmosphere of warmth and intimacy that he wanted to convey. Within a richly furnished room, a mother dressed in velvet and fur with an elaborate headdress brushes the cheek of the child with the back of her hand; the nurse nuzzles the nape of the baby’s neck, and her left hand holds an orange ribbon which is attached to a silver and coral rattle. For all the virtuoso paintwork that Wilkie employs, this diminutive oil on panel describes real affection. The painting is similar to The First Ear-Ring (Tate Britain) which Wilkie had exhibited at the Royal Academy the previous year. As in Domestic Life, there is a Spanish atmosphere, (Wilkie had visited Spain 1827-8); the imagery of the scratching dog, and the brass ewer and basin in the foreground are near identical.