William Simson

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William Simson (1800 - August 29, 1847) was a Scottish portrait, landscape and subject painter.

[edit] Biography

Simson was born at Dundee in 1800. He studied under Andrew Wilson at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, and his early pictures of landscape and marine subjects found quick sales. He then turned his attention to figure painting, producing the "Twelfth of August" in 1829, which was followed by "Sportsmen Regaling" and a "Highland Deer-stalker" in 1830.

In 1830 he was elected as a member of the Scottish Academy; and, having acquired some means by portrait-painting, he spent three years in Italy. On his return in 1838 he settled in London, where he exhibited his "Camaldolese monk showing Relics," his "Cimabue and Giotto," his "Dutch Family," and his "Columbus and his Child" at the Convent of Santa María de la Rábida.

Simson was most talented as a landscapist; his "Solway Moss Sunset," exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy of 1831 and now in the National Gallery in Edinburgh, ranks as one of the finest examples of the early Scottish school of landscape. His elder brother George (1791-1862), a portrait-painter, was also a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and his younger brother David (d. 1874) practised as a landscape-painter.

He died in London on the 29th of August 1847.