Allan Ramsay (1713 – 1784) (67 works)

9 February 2013

6 155

Category: Art and hand-drawn graphics, 0+

Allan Ramsay
October 13, 1713 Edinburgh, Scotland - August 10, 1784 Dover, England

Scottish artist, eldest son of the poet Alan Ramsay (1685-1758).

He studied in London, Rome, Naples, first worked in Edinburgh, later in Italy (1755-1757).

In 1757, after completing a portrait of George III, then Prince of Wales, Ramsay became a court portraitist.
In 1762 he moved to London, where he received permanent work at court.

Although his work at court provided a generous and steady income, it caused Ramsay to lose his artistic individuality. All his best works were completed before his court appointment. His style was simple and refined, especially evident in his portraits of women.
In Ramsay’s work there is a noticeable desire to master the experience of modern Italian and French painting. His early work "Samuel Torriano" (1738) is close to the portraits of the Neapolitan Solimena, with whom he studied, his later paintings - a portrait of his wife (1755, Edinburgh, National Gallery) or "Countess Emilia Kielder" (1765, Liverpool, Walker Gallery) - attract with its almost French grace, delicate silvery color. The elegance of the composition and the subtlety of the pictorial execution of Ramsay's canvases allow us to consider him a predecessor of the wonderful English portrait painters of the next decades - Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Since, in addition to portraits of members of the royal family, he was obliged to create many copies of paintings from the royal collection, Ramsay had to refuse outside commissions. Painting became a mechanical process for him until an accident (a hand injury) in 1773 forced him to abandon art altogether. However, Ramsay's best paintings forever remained among the highest achievements of British art.
He was elected a member of the Royal Academy and knighted.