Alexander Fraser was David Wilkie’s most accomplished protégé, and many of his major genre works bear comparison with those of his mentor.
Fraser and Wilkie first met in Edinburgh in the early years of the nineteenth century when they were pupils at Edinburgh’s Trustees’ Academy. Wilkie’s phenomenal early success soon led him to move to London, and in 1813 Fraser followed to work as his assistant. Fraser was responsible for many of the minor still-life details in Wilkie’s works, but also produced a substantial oeuvre of his own domestic genre paintings, helping to cater to an exploding demand for traditional scenes of Scottish life amongst the London picture-buying public.