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 :. | robert burns | At the Isaakievskaya Square in Leningrad | River Forth | A Highland Loch Landscape | A Leningrad Theme |
Related Artists:
BALEN, Hendrick van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1575-1632 Hendrik van Balen (1575 - 1632) was a Flemish painter, who was born and died in Antwerp. Van Balen studied art while traveling in Italy. He was the teacher of Anthony Van Dyck and Frans Snyders and was also a contemporary of many of the other famous Flemish artists, such as the Brueghels, Jan and Peter.
Adolf Holzel
(13 May 1853 - 17 October 1934) was a German artist/painter. His style developed from Impressionism to expressive modernism. He was born in Olomouc in Moravia, the son of the publisher Eduard Hölzel. In 1871 his family moved to Vienna, and from 1872 he studied painting at the Vienna Academy. He continued his studies in Munich at the Kunstakademie beginning in 1876. There he became acquainted with the painter Fritz von Uhde and painted in a style influenced by Impressionism. From 1888 to 1905 he worked in Dachau, where there was an artists' colony. Already during his time in Dachau his work began moving toward abstraction, reflecting his interest in such principles as the golden section and Goethe's Theory of Colors. He taught at the Stuttgart Academy, and paintedefour years before Wassily Kandinskyean abstract painting (Composition in Red, 1905). Among his students the so-called "Hölzel circle" developed, including Oskar Schlemmer, Willi Baumeister, Max Ackermann and Johannes Itten. In 1919 Adolf Hölzel left the Stuttgart Academy and went into retirement. He died in Stuttgart in 1934.
Philip Leslie Hale
1865-1931