Robert Scott Lauder

Self portrait in 17th century costume

Lauder's portrait of David Roberts Esq. in the Dress He Wore in Palestine, (1840)

Robert Scott Lauder (25 June 1803 – 21 April 1869) was a Scottish mid-Victorian artist who described himself as a "historical painter". He was one of the original members of the Royal Scottish Academy.

Life and work

Lauder was born at Silvermills, Edinburgh, on 25 June 1803, the third son of John Lauder of Silvermills (died 1838), Burgess of Edinburgh and proprietor of the tannery at Silvermills, by his wife Helen Tait (d.1850). After attending the Royal High School he went to London, where his eldest brother William was engaged in the family business.

He returned to Edinburgh about 1826 and was elected one of the original members of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1830. On 9 September 1833 at St.Cuthberts in Edinburgh he married Isabella Ramsay Thomson and they then went abroad, accompanied by his younger artist-brother, James Eckford Lauder. Robert studied for some years in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Venice and Munich.

Lauder returned to London in 1838 where he lived for several years, where his three children – Isabella, John, and Robert, were baptised at St.Thomas’s Church, Southwark, in 1840, 1841, and 1844. Whilst in London he exhibited at the Royal Academy and competed in the Westminster Hall competition of 1847, sending his Christ walking on the Sea, which was subsequently purchased by Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts. He became the first president of the short-lived National Institution of Fine Arts and also exhibited there.

He later removed back to Edinburgh in 1849 where both his sons — Robert Scott Lauder (born 1844), who became a physician, and John Thomson Lauder (1841–1865) — attended the Edinburgh Academy. Sir Walter Scott's novels provided him with subjects for many of his most successful historical paintings.^[1] About 1860 he suffered a paralytic stroke and did not practice after 1861. He died at Edinburgh from a bout of bronchitis on 21 April 1869, still paralysed. He is buried in Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh.

Selected paintings

Key works:

• Scene from The Bride of Lammermoor (1839)
• The Trial of Effie Deans (1840)
• Meg Merrilies (1842)
• Hannah presenting Samuel to Eli (1845)
• Mother and Child (1848)
• Sentinels
• Christ Teacheth Humility (1847)
• John Gibson Lockhart (Portrait)
• Reverend John Thomson of Duddingstone (Portrait)
• William Simson, R.S.A. (Portrait)
• Hagar & Ishmael (1840)

Other pictures of note are:

• Italian Goatherds entertaining a brother of the Santissima Trinita (1843)
• Ruth "so she gleaned in the field until even" (1845) (see Book of Ruth)
• The Gow Chrom Reluctantly Conducting the Glee Maiden to a Place of Safety (1846)
• Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery

Other portraits of note are:

• Sir Archibald Alison, Bt.
• Thomas Duncan
• John Henning
• Elizabeth Lauder, Mrs. William Paterson, with her daughter Janet
• Henry Lauder (the artist's brother) painted c. 1825–1827.
• Sir Thomas Dick Lauder
• Robert Scott Lauder (self)
• John Gibson Lockhart, with Charlotte Scott
• David Roberts (1840)
• David Scott
• Sir John Steell
• Thomas Thomson

Footnotes

References

• Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, edited by George C. Williamson, London 1927, (5 volumes).
• The Edinburgh Academy Register, Edinburgh, 1914.
• Testaments of John Lauder of Silvermills & Helen Tait, in the National Archives of Scotland.
•  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). "Lauder, Robert Scott". Dictionary of National Biography 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert Scott Lauder.

• Works in the National Galleries of Scotland