born in Edinburgh. He was bred a house-painter, but
having ambition for something higher, he studied hard in London and
afterwards in Italy. In 1728, he came to America, finally settling in
Boston. Here he acquired not only considerable fame as a portrait painter
but also a substantial fortune by his art. Many of his paintings are
preserved in Yale University, in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and
elsewhere.
We also have in Colonial times, John
Watson, a Scottish painter who lived for many years at Perth Amboy, N. J.,
and died previous to the Revolutionary War; also E. F. Andrews, who left
the best portraits of Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington and Dolly
Madison, all of which hang in the White House; and Cosmo Alexander, who
came to America from Edinburgh about 1770 and took with him in his travels
the boy Gilbert Charles Stuart and taught him the rudiments of his art;
and who at his death left Stuart in the wardship of his friend Sir George
Chambers in Edinburgh.
Gilbert Charles Stuart (1752-1828),
one of the most famous portrait painters of America, and next to Sir
Benjamin West, the greatest American artist of his day, was born in
Narragansett, Rhode Island, of Scottish parents. After the death of Sir
George Chambers, he was thrown on his own resources in Edinburgh, and went
through many vicissitudes before becoming a distinguished portrait painter
in London. In 1792, at the height of his fame, he returned to the United
States, and painted portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, John
Adams, and many other of the country’s most distinguished sons. His
portraits of Washington are considered the best of the Father of his
Country.
Dr. Alexander Anderson, the father
of wood-engraving in America, was born in
York City, the son of Scottish parents, in 1774. Although educated for the
medical profession, his taste lay more in artistic lines. He became a
self-taught engraver and attained to the highest skill in his chosen
profession, and invented many of the tools used in the art. His earliest
work was illustrating the first edition of Noah Webster’s Spelling Book
and another little book called the Looking-Glass for the Mind.
He died in Jersey City so recently as 1870, in the ninety-sixth year of
his age.
George Murray, born in Scotland,
died in Philadelphia in 1822, was a pupil of Anker Smith in London, and
was the most noted engraver of banknotes of his day. He is best known,
however, for his skilful engraving of animals. He also engraved a number
of portraits and landscapes, and two of the best engravings of the Battle
of Lake Erie bear the name of his firm in Philadelphia.
In the nineteenth century we have
the Smillies, a family in which the artistic temperament was highly
developed. James Smillie, the first of the family, was born in Edinburgh,
in 1807, and settled in New York in 1829. He was recognized as the finest
landscape engraver of his time in America, and one of his brothers,
William Cumming Smillie, was one of the most prominent bank-note engravers
of the continent. Two of James Smillie's sons obtained high rank as
artists. James D. Smillie, born in New York in 1835, engraved Darley’s
illustrations to Fenimore Cooper’s novels, and became a National
Academician in 1876. He was also distinguished as a painter in oil and
watercolour, and his ability was such that he was twice elected President
of the Water Colour Society. His brother, George Henry Smillie, also born
in New York City, in 1840, became a pupil of James Macdougall Hart. He was
elected an Associate of the National Academy in 1864, and in 1882 he
became a full Academician, and is recognized as a master of oil and
water-colour. His A Lake in the Woods (1872), , A Florida Lagoon
(1875), and Summer Morning on Long Island (1884), are excellent
examples of his talent.
Another Scottish artist who achieved
distinction in this country was Thomas L. Smith, who was born in Glasgow
in 1835. He studied art in New York, and in 1870 became an Associate of
the National Academy. In addition to his painting he has written largely
on art subjects.
James Macdougall Hart, among the
first American landscape painters, was born in Kilmnarnock, Scotland, in
1828. He removed with his parents to Albany in 1831, where he and his
brother, William Hart. born in Paisley in 1823, were both apprenticed to a
coachmaker, and both became famous in American art annals. James
Macdougall Hart was especially noted for his treatment of cattle in
landscape. William Hart was the first President of the Brooklyn Academy of
Design and 1870 to 1873 President of the American Water Colour Society.
John C. King (1806-1882), the New
England seulptor, famous for his busts of John Quincy Adams, Daniel
Webster, Louis Agassiz, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a native of
Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Thomas Crawford (1814-1857), many of
whose works are preserved in the Capitol at Washington and who was the
sculptor of the celebrated fountain in Richmond, Virginia, was born at
sea, of Ulster-Scottish parents on their way from the neighborhood of
Bally-Shannon, Ireland. He was the father of Francis Marion Crawford, the
novelist.
Of the older sculptors of Scottish
descent, the most famous are: J. Q. A. Ward, born in Ohio in 1830, whose
best work is exemplified in the statue of George Washington at the
Sub-Treasury Building, New York, and by his Indian Hunter in Central Park,
in the same city. His brother, Edgar Melville Ward, was also a painter of
note. Joel T. Hart (1810-1877), a native of Kentucky, whose busts of Henry
Clay in Richmond, New Orleans and Louisville, and portrait statues of
other famous contemporaries are greatly admired. Alexander Doyle (born
1857), sculptor of the statues of Horace Greeley, in New York, and of John
Howard Payne, in Washington; and James Wilson Alexander McDonald (born in
1824), both natives of Ohio, who was as famous a painter as a sculptor. At
the present time, no living artist holds a higher place than Frederick
MacMonnies, sculptor and painter, whose biography appears elsewhere in
this volume.
George Inness (1825-1894), the
greatest of American landscape painters, was of Scottish blood, as was
James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903), the great etcher, painter and
wit, whose grandfather, in 1803, was the builder of Fort Dearborn, on the
present site of Chicago; also John White Alexander (1856-1915), the
American portrait and figure painter.
In the field of music and the drama,
Edward Alexander McDowell (18611908), professor of music in Columbia
University and composer for the pianoforte, was of Scottish descent. The
late venerable James U. Stoddart (1827-1907) was born in Yorkshire, spent
his youth in Glasgow and came to the United Stales in 1854. His
delineation of Scottish and other character parts will be long remembered
by all who were privileged to hear him. Of older memory, is James Edward
Murdoch (1811-1893), born in Philadelphia, Pa., of Scottish parents. After
rising to t.he height of his profession and supporting most of the leading
actors of his day, he left the stage and during the war secured more than
$250,000 for aid of the soldiers by reciting and lecturing gratuitously
for the various aid societies. His two sons enlisted in the Union Army and
his youngest son, Captain Thomas F. Murdoch, was killed at Chickamanga.
