history and portraiture, and substituted a light effective style of handling for the careful execution of his earlier works. _John Knox Preaching_ (National Gallery) is a good specimen of this second period of Wilkie's art. He succeeded Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830 as Painter in Ordinary to the King, and was knighted six years later. In 1840 Wilkie visited the East, and painted the portrait of the Sultan Abdul Medjid. Next year, whilst far from home, on board a steamer off Gibraltar, he died, and found a grave in the sea. There are eleven of his pictures in the National Gallery. Her Majesty possesses most of the pictures painted by Wilkie in Spain, such as _The Guerilla Council of War_, and _The Maid of Saragossa_. Another Spanish picture, painted in England, is _Two Spanish Monks in the Cathedral of Toledo_, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne. In it we notice the painting of the hands, which are full of life and action, a characteristic in which Wilkie excelled. "His early art certainly made a great impression on the English school, showing how Dutch art might be nationalized, and story and sentiment added to scenes of common life treated with truth and individuality. As to his middle time, such pictures as the _John Knox_ also had their influence on the school, and the new mode of execution as supported by Wilkie's authority, a very evil influence, bringing discredit upon English pictures as entirely wanting in permanency. His methods and the pigments he used were soon discarded in England, but at the time they influenced, and have continued to influence, his countrymen long after his death." (_Redgrave._) [Illustration: THE MAID OF SARAGOSSA. _By_ WILKIE. A.D. 1827. _In the possession of the Queen._] WILLIAM FREDERICK WITHERINGTON (1785--1865) combined landscape and subject painting in his art. He exhibited his first picture, _Tintern Abbey_, in 1811, and his succeeding works were principally landscapes and figure subjects in combination. Witherington was elected A.R.A. in 1830, and became a full member ten years later. Favourable specimens of his thoroughly English and pleasing pictures are _The Stepping Stones_ and _The Hop Garland_ in the National Gallery, and _The Hop Garden_ in the Sheepshanks Collection at South Kensington.