(1758 - 1840)
Alexander Nasmyth, artist and engineer, was born in Edinburgh, the son of architect and builder Michael Nasmyth. He studied at the high school in Edinburgh and was trained by his father to join the family business. However, instead Nasmyth took an apprenticeship with a house-painter in 1773, before briefly attending the drawing classes of Alexander Runciman the following year. After meeting the portrait painter Allan Ramsay, Nasmyth worked as an assistant in Ramsay’s London studio, before returning to Edinburgh in 1778 to establish himself as a portrait painter. He turned to landscape painting after spending time in Italy between 1782 and 1785 and became one of the chief founders of the Scottish picturesque landscape school.
