Allan Ramsay

(1713 - 1784)

ARTIST

He was the son of Allan Ramsay, poet, who encouraged his artistic leanings from the age of twelve, until he went to London at twenty to study under William Hogarth. The English genius took a liking to Ramsay and thought so much of him that he dedicated his twelve engravings, illustrative of Butler's Hudibras, to the young Scot.

In 1736 Ramsay travelled through Europe to Rome, being shipwrecked on the way, near Pisa. At Rome he studied at the French Academy under two celebrated painters, Solimena and Imperiale. He enjoyed Roman society and entertained them by writing verse, sonnets, odes, epigrams in various languages.

In 1738 he returned to Edinburgh for two years and began a series of very fine portraits, especially of the 2nd Duke of Argyll. He found Edinburgh society fully as famous as London's and made friends with David Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson and others of that brilliant coterie.

In 1756 he returned to London and was on terms of intimacy with top society, painting portraits of many of them. He painted several portraits of the young King George III and Queen Charlotte for presentation to foreign monarchs and statesmen. So much was demanded of him that he employed the young Scots painters, David Martin and A]exander Nasmyth, to assist him.

In 1775 he had an accident in Italy which prevented him from painting and affected his health, so he retired to Rome, leaving an assistant to finish off the portraits of no less than fifty pairs of assorted kings and queens, with which Europe at that age was surfeited.

In 1784 he felt so unwell that he left Rome for England. On reaching Dover, he died. The strangest exclusion from fame was his. He was never asked to join the Royal Academy. The reason was perhaps he was not primarily a painter.He was an intellectual man, a friend of Voltaire and Rousseau, as James Boswell was interested in Greek and Roman archaeology. He perhaps excited envy by his social success.

His best portraits are of his wife, of the Countess of Kildare, and of Mrs MacLeod of MacLeod dressed in Rob Roy tartan.

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