The Cottage Toilet

The subject is taken from 'The Gentle Shepherd' (1725), V, ii, 1-6, by Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), the father of the painter of the same name:

‘While Peggy laces up her bosom fair, With a blew snood Jenny binds up her hair; Glaud by his morning ingle takes a beek, The rising sun shines motty thro’ the reek, A pipe his mouth; the lasses please his een, And now and than his joke maun interveen.’

Wilkie’s treatment of the subject may have been influenced by one of the illustrations by David Allan in the 1788 edition of Ramsay’s poem....