Scottish Painter, 1758-1840 was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, often called the father of Scottish landscape painting". Edinburgh Castle and Nor'Loch, circa 1780.Born in Edinburgh, he studied at the Royal High School and the Trustees Academy under Alexander Runciman, and, having been apprenticed as an heraldic painter to a coachbuilder, he, at the age of sixteen, attracted the attention of Allan Ramsay, who took the youth with him to London, and employed him upon the subordinate portions of his works. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh in 1778, and was soon largely patronized as a portrait painter. He also assisted Mr Miller of Dalswinton, as draughtsman, in his mechanical researches and experiments; and, this gentleman having generously offered the painter a loan to enable him to pursue his studies abroad, he left in 1782 for Italy, where he remained two years. Robert Burns, 1787.On his return he painted the excellent portrait of Robert Burns, now in the Scottish National Gallery, well known through Walker's engraving. Political feeling at that time ran high in Edinburgh, and Nasmyth's pronounced Liberal opinions, which he was too outspoken and sincere to disguise, gave offence to many of his aristocratic patrons, and led to the diminution of his practice as a portraitist. In his later years, accordingly, he devoted himself mainly to landscape work, and did not disdain on occasion to set his hand to scene-painting for the theatres. He has been styled, not unjustly, the father of Scottish landscape arte His subjects are carefully finished and coloured, but are wanting in boldness and freedom.  Related Paintings of Alexander Nasmyth :. | A Highland Loch Landscape | A Leningrad Theme | River Forth | Castle Huntly. | At the Isaakievskaya Square in Leningrad |
Related Artists:
CLEVE, Cornelis van
Flemish painter, Antwerp school (b. 1520, Antwerpen, d. after 1570, Antwerpen).
Pasternak, Leonid
Russian, 1862-1945 Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. From 1881 to 1883 Pasternak studied painting privately with Professor Yevgraf Semyonovich Sorokin (1821-92), while working towards a degree in medicine. Switching to law, he also spent several terms studying drawing at the Akademie in Munich between 1883 and 1885. He had his first success in 1889 when his large genre painting in oil, News from Home (1.10*1.52 m, 1888; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.), was bought by the influential collector Pavel Tret'yakov. The painting reflects the influence of his German teachers in the sombre tones and the emphasis on the realism of the figures and setting. In 1889 he settled in Moscow and established his own art school.
John Gould
1804 - 1881. (Born Sept. 14, 1804, Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, England. Died Feb. 3, 1881, London) was an English ornithologist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" was pivotal in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, though they are barely mentioned in Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species.Gould was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, the son of a gardener, and the boy probably had a scanty education. Shortly afterwards his father obtained a position on an estate near Guildford, Surrey, and then in 1818 became foreman in the Royal Gardens of Windsor. The young Gould started training as a gardener, being employed under his father at Windsor from 1818 to 1824, and he was subsequently a gardener at Ripley Castle in Yorkshire. He became an expert in the art of taxidermy and in 1824 he set himself up in business in London as a taxidermist,