NASMYTH, Alexander (1758-1840)
Biography
Alexander Nasmyth is generally regarded as the most important Scottish landscape painter. He was born on September 1758 in the family home in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh and studied in London and Italy and influenced many Scottish artists - not least several of his own children, eight of whom are recognised as artists in their own right – notably the eldest, Patrick. While his ancestors had been landed gentry in the Lowlands his father and grandfather were involved with the construction of some of the earliest houses in what was to be known as the New Town. It is interesting that Alexander, although he did not go into the family business, was the designer of the Dean Bridge and St. Bernard’s Well, the small temple overlooking the Water of Leith, and helped with the early plans for the New Town layout. He was the first member of the gamily to drop the ‘e’ at the end of the name of Nasmyth.
After High School Alexander he attended the Trustees’ Academy where first Alexander Runciman, then David Allen, was successively Master. As with so many contemporary artists in England he was apprenticed to a coachbuilder, James Cumming, in order to decorate the panels of carriages with heraldic details.
While at the Trustees’ Academy Nasmyth’s talent was spotted by Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) who took him to London where he worked as an assistant in Ramsay’s studio for four years. In 1778 he returned to Edinburgh and set up on his own, principally as a portrait painter. Among his patrons was Patrick Miller of Dalswinton and it was he who lent Nasmyth £500 to enable him to go to Italy from 1782-84. In those days an artist was scarcely considered to have completed his education until he had studied the works of the great masters at Florence and Rome. Nasmyth visited both as well as Bologna, Padua and other cities, making studies and drawings of the best artistic works he saw, and sketches from nature of the most remarkable places he had visited.
On his return he continued as a portraitist but his radical political views lost him some potential patrons and the field of portraiture in Edinburgh was in any case dominated by Sir Henry Raeburn at that time. He also worked part time as a landscape designed, architectural consultant and successful designer of theatrical scenery, a field which David Roberts’s said he ‘excited universal admiration’. He befriended Roberts’s burns and his Portrait of the bard is his best known portrait. He was close friends of contemporaries such as Wilkie, Raeburn and Leitch.
Scotland at the end of the 18th century was emerging from a lengthy period of poverty. New wealth brought with it the advancement of taste and it was in this environment that Sir Walter Scott, some of whose works were illustrated by Nasmyth, Burns and Raeburn were able to flourish. The situation was tailor-made for the emergence of a native landscape painter. Alexander Nasmyth was the first eminent Scottish artist to contrite on landscape; immediately before him only Allan Ramsay, in the field of portraiture, has become an established artist and most of the latter’s output was produced south of the border.
Dr. Johnson had written that “a tree in Scotland is as rare as a horse in Venice”. Starting around 1750 landowners had begun to plant trees for visual and practical purposes. The depiction of these trees, together with the broad-leaved foregrounds, was to become one of the hallmarks of the work of the Nasmyth family of painters. Alexander Nasmyth would assist the gentry to improve the appearance of their estates, especially the view from the main house.
Pictures depicting old Edinburgh streets and houses are some of the most accomplished things he did, and his ‘Shipping at Leith’ in the Edinburgh City Art Centre is on a par with any of the Dutch Masters. After 1792 Nasmyth concentrated almost exclusively on landscape painting. Initially he imitated in composition the formal landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and was influenced by the Dutch 17th Century painters whose work he had studied in Rome and on his travels on the Continent. But he went further. By combining the classical influence of those who precede him with the romanticism of these that followed, he developed a distinctive, refreshing style which was all his own. Caw, writing in 1908, says ‘his composition was frequently well ordered on classical lines, his tome was harmonious and pleasant though mannered, and his drawing was careful, precise and not wanting in character’.
Nasmyth concentrated on the faithful reproduction of nature. ‘The nearer you can get to that the better’, he told Clarkson Stanfield and others whom he influenced such as David Roberts, William Leighton Leitch, the Rev’d John Thomson of Duddingston and his own son, Patrick and daughters. When Nasmyth died in 1840 Sir David Wilkie wrote ‘He was the founder of the Landscape Painting School of Scotland, and by his taste and talent has for many years taken the lead in the patriotic aim of enriching his native land with the representations of her romantic scenery’.
The family co-operated with their father – Patrick on his return from England, where he has become firmly established as the ‘English Hobbema’, and the daughters who lived with their parents in Edinburgh. He was not averse to using artist’s license for making an existing landscape more interesting. Being a close-knit family at the home in York Place in Edinburgh and members of the family frequently painted the same views. The daughters were all taught by their father but each developed her own particular characteristics and idiosyncrasies.
A founder member of the Society of Associated Artists of Edinburgh, with whom he exhibited 1808-1814, Nesmith also showed works at the Royal Institute 1821-1830 (he became an associate in 1825) and at the Royal Scottish Academy 1830-1840., being elected an Honorary Member in 1834. In London he was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and of the British Institute from 1801-1839. He exhibited nine pictures at the Royal Academy 1813-1826 and at other provincial exhibitions.
Alexander Nasmyth ranks as the most important conventional landscape painter in Scotland and was the first to portray a feeling for Nature in the Highlands. His offspring without exception inherited a share of the family genius most notably Patrick.
