For Wilkie’s second royal commission, he chose to portray a more distinctively Scottish subject than in any painting produced since he left Fife in 1805. The scene shows a ‘Penny Wedding’, at which guests contributed a penny towards the festivities. The custom was dying out by the early-nineteenth century, so Wilkie’s vision is a nostalgic depiction of the traditions of ‘Old Scotland’. Painted for George IV, when Prince Regent, in 1818-19