"My father was much employed in assisting the noblemen and landed gentry in improving the landscape appearance of their estates, especially when seen from their mansion windows." - James Nasmyth
Alexander Nasmyth is best-known as ‘the founder of the Scottish landscape tradition’, but his earliest training was as a decorative painter. His talent earned him the attention of Allan Ramsay, a leading portrait artist and court painter to George III. Nasmyth spent four years training in Ramsay’s London studio and emerged as a professional portraitist to the nobility.
Nasmyth utilised a palette of blues, pinks, lilac and purple and had a particular acuity for fabric and texture, which emulated that of his former master. His earliest portraits were principally of single sitters, but from 1780 Nasmyth began to paint groups in the manner of Zoffany, with notable sitters including The Duke of Atholl and his Family, and Patrick Miller and His Children.
Commissions waned when word spread about the young artist’s liberal politics, and a two-year period of study in Italy finalised Nasmyth’s move away from portraiture. Upon his return to Edinburgh in 1784 Nasmyth established himself as an accomplished painter of landscapes. Architectural components recurred throughout his compositions. A true polymath, Nasmyth was also a talented engineer and architect and often fulfilled commissions to design and expand the estates of the Scottish nobility.
Alexander Nasmyth is recorded as spending much time, and deriving much pleasure from, walking around his native city, often accompanied by his friend Robert Burns. His famous portrait of Burns (National Galleries of Scotland) was painted the previous year and was also executed on a small scale typical of Nasmyth’s early work. A 1788 Edinburgh directory describes his profession as ‘portrait and landscape painter’ but by the end of the decade Henry Raeburn’s near-monopolisation of Edinburgh portraiture compelled Nasmyth to concentrate on landscapes.
The York Place Art School
In the 1790s Nasmyth designed 47 York Place, Edinburgh, for his family. The plan incorporated residential quarters in the top floor apartment and two garret storeys in the roof to accommodate teaching space and a studio. With the opportunity for European travel limited by the Napoleonic Wars, it was an astute time to establish a school of art. Aspiring artists enrolled to witness Nasmyth’s ‘familiar and practical’ lectures accompanied by demonstrations, with the household becoming a thriving hub in Edinburgh’s early nineteenth-century ‘cultural Renaissance’. Notable attendees included David Wilkie, Francis Grant, David Roberts, Clarkson Stansfield, William Allan, Andrew Geddes and the Rev. John Thomson of Duddingston. Nasmyth also taught middle-class women, for whom painting and drawing were important social graces. Tutelage was supported by Nasmyth’s daughters, who sometimes led sketching tours around familiar Edinburgh vistas including Duddingston Loch, Craigmillar Castle, Roslin, or the Forth estuary.
The Nasmyth Children
Of the numerous aspiring artists Nasmyth tutored, it might be said that his most attentive students were his own children. This significant group of pictures by Alexander, Patrick, Anne and Charlotte exemplifies the distinctive style and precocious talent of the Nasmyth family.
‘At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves.’ - James Nasmyth, James Nasmyth Engineer: An Autobiography, John Murray, London, 1883
Raised in a uniquely artistic and intellectual environment, it is of little surprise that the Nasmyth children understood the principles of drawing and painting. It is remarkable, however, that so many possessed natural artistic talent. Of his eleven children at least eight were gifted artists: his six eldest daughters Jane, Barbara, Margaret, Elizabeth, Anne and Charlotte, and his eldest son Patrick and younger son James. James observed that ‘my father’s object was to render each and every one of his children…independent…accordingly, he sedulously kept up the attention of his daughters to fine art. He set on foot drawing classes…managed by his six daughters, superintended by himself.’
The Nasmyth children benefited from intimate access to their father’s paintings and expansive drawings portfolio, including many early copies of Old Masters made at the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh and Allan Ramsay’s studio. It also contained numerous landscape sketches observed from life, overwhelmingly portraying England and Scotland. Only a few European sketches survive, likely made during Nasmyth’s Italian studies, but charmingly these continental landscapes appear to have been pored over by the Nasmyth children, and can be seen to have inspired passages in their adult paintings. They all went on to paint landscapes almost exclusively, with each adopting a personal interpretation of their father’s style.
Alexander Nasmyth died at his York Place home on 10 April 1840.
