1.
Art school
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An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art, especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools are institutions with elementary, secondary, post-secondary or undergraduate and they are distinguished from larger institutions which also may offer majors or degrees in the visual arts, but only as one part of a broad-based range of programs. Frances École des Beaux-Arts is, perhaps, the first model for such organized instruction, breaking with a tradition of master and they are Emily Carr University of Art and Design, NSCAD University, OCAD University, and Alberta College of Art and Design. Emily Carr University has the most active research program among the four with over $15 million in research over the last five years, OCAD Universitys research intensity has reached $3.2 million in 2011/12. All four schools teach in the major disciplines from painting through to new media, over the last five years, Emily Carr has garnered the most of the major awards for students and alums across the country. The most recent RBC Painting Competition was won by Vanessa Maltese, NSCAD University was founded in 1887 by Anna Leonowens and other Halifax women. The school gained international prominence in the 1970s for innovation in art under the leadership of Garry Kennedy. In spite of its modest size, Art in America suggested in 1973 that NSCAD was the best art school in North America, while more recently The Globe and Mail called it Canadas most illustrious. Claude Watson School for the Arts and Karen Kain School of the Arts are intermediate-age public art schools in Toronto, in Brampton, Mayfield Secondary Schools Regional Arts Program offers a public high school-level art school. Innovators like Voice of Purpose out of Toronto, Ontario are currently working on promoting the Purpose Driven Education pedagogy through the use of arts-based programming, in France, art schools have an quite old history. The oldest is Paris fine art school, established in 1682, some of those schools were called academies and were prestigious institutions, devoted to the education of great painters or sculptors. Others were called école gratuite de dessin, and were devoted to the education of arts, as today, there is in France 45 national or territorial public high schools of art, that deliver bachelor and Master degrees. Art schools have a history in Sweden since the first half of the 18th Century, students may attend the Royal Institute of Art, which got its start in 1735. There are also tertiary art schools attached to universities in Gothenburg, Malmö, others, whose existence ties in indelibly with that of larger, non-discipline-specific universities exist. Most art schools of either orientation are equipped to offer opportunities spanning from post-16 to postgraduate level, the range of colleges span from predominantly further education establishments to research-led specialist institutes. The University of the Arts London, for example, is a federally structured institution that comprises six previously independent schools situated in London, the Royal College of Art with its degree-awarding arm and singular focus on postgraduate awards being a most singular exception. Since the 1970s, degrees have replaced diplomas as the qualification in the field. In the case of wholly freestanding institutions, degree validation agreements in liaison with a university have long been the custom for Bachelor of Arts level upward
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University of Edinburgh
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The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582, is the sixth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotlands ancient universities. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city of Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh was ranked 17th and 21st in the world by the 2014–15 and 2015-16 QS rankings. It is now ranked 19th in the according to 2016-17 QS Rankings. It is ranked 16th in the world in arts and humanities by the 2015–16 Times Higher Education Ranking and it is ranked the 23rd most employable university in the world by the 2015 Global Employability University Ranking. It is ranked as the 6th best university in Europe by the U. S. News Best Global Universities Ranking and it is a member of both the Russell Group, and the League of European Research Universities, a consortium of 21 research universities in Europe. It has the third largest endowment of any university in the United Kingdom, after the universities of Cambridge and it continues to have links to the British Royal Family, having had the Duke of Edinburgh as its Chancellor from 1953 to 2010 and Princess Anne since 2011. Edinburgh receives approximately 50,000 applications every year, making it the fourth most popular university in the UK by volume of applicants, after St Andrews, it is the most difficult university to gain admission into in Scotland, and 9th overall in the UK. This was a move at the time, as most universities were established through Papal bulls. Established as the Tounis College, it opened its doors to students in October 1583, instruction began under the charge of another St Andrews graduate Robert Rollock. It was the fourth Scottish university in a period when the more populous. It was renamed King Jamess College in 1617, by the 18th century, the university was a leading centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. The universitys first custom-built building was the Old College, now Edinburgh Law School and its first forte in teaching was anatomy and the developing science of surgery, from which it expanded into many other subjects. From the basement of a nearby house ran the anatomy tunnel corridor and it went under what was then North College Street, and under the university buildings until it reached the universitys anatomy lecture theatre, delivering bodies for dissection. It was from this tunnel the body of William Burke was taken after he had been hanged, towards the end of the 19th century, Old College was becoming overcrowded and Robert Rowand Anderson was commissioned to design new Medical School premises in 1875. The medical school was more or less built to his design and was completed by the addition of the McEwan Hall in the 1880s. The building now known as New College was originally built as a Free Church college in the 1840s and has been the home of divinity at the university since the 1920s. The two oldest schools – law and divinity – are both well-esteemed, with law being based in Old College and divinity in New College on the Mound and they are also represented by the Edinburgh University Sports Union which was founded in 1866. The medical school is renowned throughout the world and it was widely considered the best medical school in the English-speaking world throughout the 18th century and first half of the 19th century
3.
Anne, Princess Royal
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Anne, Princess Royal, KG KT GCVO GCStJ QSO GCL CD is the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. At the time of her birth, she was third in the line of succession, behind her mother – then Princess Elizabeth – and elder brother and she rose to second after her mothers accession, but is currently 12th in line. Anne is known for her work, and is patron of over 200 organisations. Princess Anne has held the title of Princess Royal since 1987 and is its seventh holder, Anne was married to Captain Mark Phillips in 1973, they divorced in 1992. They have two children and three grandchildren, in 1992, within months of her divorce, Anne married Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, whom she had met while he served as her mothers equerry between 1986 and 1989. Anne was born at Clarence House on 15 August 1950 at 11,50 am, as the child and only daughter of Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh. She was the grandchild of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Anne was baptised in the Music Room of Buckingham Palace on 21 October 1950, by Archbishop of York, after the death of George VI, Annes mother ascended the throne as Queen Elizabeth II. Given her young age at the time, she did not attend the coronation, the Company was active until 1963, when Anne went to boarding school. Anne enrolled at Benenden School in 1963, in 1968 she left school with six GCE O-Levels and two A-Levels. In the next couple of years, Anne started dating, in 1970 her first boyfriend was Andrew Parker Bowles, who later became the first husband of Camilla Shand. Following the wedding, Anne and her husband lived at Gatcombe Park and he was made acting captain by the start of 1974 when he was appointed a personal aide-de-camp to Queen Elizabeth II. By 1989, however, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips announced their intention to separate, the couple divorced on 23 April 1992. The Queen had offered Phillips an earldom on his wedding day, the couple had two children, Peter Phillips and Zara Phillips. As female-line descendants of royalty, the children have no title despite being the grandchildren of a monarch, Anne became a grandmother on 29 December 2010 when Peter and his wife Autumn had a daughter, Savannah. On 29 March 2012, the couple had daughter, Isla. Annes third granddaughter, Mia Grace, was born on 17 January 2014 to Zara and her husband Mike Tindall. As Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were returning to Buckingham Palace on 20 March 1974, from a charity event on Pall Mall, the driver of the Escort, Ian Ball, jumped out and began firing a pistol
4.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
5.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
6.
Higher education
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Higher education, post-secondary education, or third level education is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completion of secondary education. Tertiary education at non-degree level is referred to as further education or continuing education as distinct from higher education. The right of access to education is mentioned in a number of international human rights instruments. In Europe, Article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950, in the days when few pupils progressed beyond primary education, the term higher education was often used to refer to secondary education, which can create some confusion. Higher education includes teaching, research, exacting applied work, within the realm of teaching, it includes both the undergraduate level, and beyond that, graduate-level. The latter level of education is referred to as graduate school. Higher education is important to national economies, both as an industry, in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy. College educated workers have commanded a measurable wage premium and are less likely to become unemployed than less educated workers. However, the admission of so many students of average ability to higher education inevitably requires a decline in academic standards. There is some question as to whether advanced mathematical skills or talent are in fact necessary for such as history, English, philosophy. In contrast, the higher education and training that takes place at vocational universities and schools usually concentrates on practical applications. Requirements for admission to such high-level graduate programs is extremely competitive, in the United States, there are large differences in wages and employment associated with different degrees. Medical doctors and lawyers are generally the highest paid workers, and have among the lowest unemployment rates and it may encompass using insights to conceive, model and scale an appropriate solution to a problem or objective. Engineering disciplines include, aerospace, biological, civil, chemical, computer, electrical, industrial, examples are painting, sculpture, and drawing, etc. Higher educational institutions in these arts include Film schools and Art schools, Higher vocational education and training takes place at the non-university tertiary level. Such education combines teaching of practical skills and theoretical expertise. Higher education differs from other forms of education such as that offered by institutions of vocational education. Higher vocational education might be contrasted with education in a broader scientific field
7.
Old Town, Edinburgh
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The Old Town is the name popularly given to the oldest part of Scotlands capital city of Edinburgh. The area has preserved much of its street plan and many Reformation-era buildings. Together with the 18th-century New Town, it part of a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site. Narrow closes, often no more than a few feet wide, the area has a number of underground vaults and hidden passages that are relics of previous phases of construction. No part of the street is officially called The Royal Mile in terms of legal addresses, the actual street names are Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street, Canongate and Abbey Strand. This crag and tail landform was created during the last ice age when receding glaciers scoured across the land pushing soft soil aside, the hilltop crag was the earliest part of the city to develop, becoming fortified and eventually developing into the current Edinburgh Castle. The rest of the city grew slowly down the tail of land from the Castle Rock and this was an easily defended spot with marshland on the south and a man-made loch, the Nor Loch, on the north. Access up the road to the settlement was therefore restricted by means of various gates. The original strong linear spine of the Royal Mile only had narrow closes and these began to be supplemented from the late 18th century with wide new north–south routes, beginning with the North Bridge/South Bridge route, and then George IV Bridge. The Edinburgh City Improvement Act of 1866 further added to the north south routes and this was devised by the architects David Cousin and John Lessels. It had quite radical effects, St Marys Wynd was demolished and replaced by the much wider St Marys Street with all new buildings, Leith Wynd which descended from the High Street to the Low Calton was demolished. Jeffrey Street started from Leith Wynds junction with the High Street, opposite St Marys Street, east Market Street was built to connect Market Street and New Street. Blackfriars Street was created by the widening of Blackfriars Wynd, removing all the buildings on the east side, Chambers Street was created, replacing N College Street and removing Brown Square and Adam Square. It was named after the then Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir William Chambers, guthrie Street was created, linking the new Chambers Street to the Cowgate. Multi-storey dwellings became the norm from the 16th century onwards, the construction of new streets including North Bridge and South Bridge in the 18th century also created underground spaces, such as the Edinburgh Vaults below the latter. Traditionally buildings were less dense in the eastern, Canongate, section and this area underwent major slum clearance and reconstruction in the 1950s, thereafter becoming an area largely of Council housing. Further Council housing was built on the fringe of the Canongate in the 1960s and 1970s in an area generally called Dumbiedykes. From 1990 to 2010 major new housing schemes appeared throughout the Canongate and these were built to a much higher scale than the traditional buildings and have greatly increased the population of the area
8.
Grassmarket
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The Grassmarket is a historic market place and an event space in the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. In relation to the rest of the city it lies in a hollow, the Grassmarket is located directly below Edinburgh Castle and forms part of one of the main east-west vehicle arteries through the city centre. It adjoins the Cowgate and Candlemaker Row at the east end, the West Bow in the north-east corner, Kings Stables Road to the north west and the West Port to the west. Leading off from the south-west corner is the Vennel, on the east side of which can still be some of the best surviving parts of the Flodden. The view to the north, dominated by the castle, has long been a subject of painters and photographers. Daniel Defoe, who visited Edinburgh in the 1720s, reports the place being used for two open air markets, the Grass-market and the Horse-market. In the late 18th century the fly coach to London, via Dumfries and Carlisle, in 1803 William and Dorothy Wordsworth took rooms at the White Hart Inn, where the poet Robert Burns had stayed during his last visit to Edinburgh in 1791. In her account of the visit Dorothy described it as not noisy, in his 1961 film Greyfriars Bobby Walt Disney chose a lodging in the Grassmarket as the place where the Skye terriers owner dies. The market closed in 1911 when a new municipal slaughter house at Tollcross replaced the old shambles in the half of the Grassmarket which joins Kings Stables Road. An inscribed flagstone in the pavement in front of the White Hart Inn indicates the spot where a bomb exploded during a Zeppelin raid on the city on the night of 2–3 April 1916. Eleven people were killed in the raid, though none at this particular spot, the Grassmarket was also a traditional place of public executions. A memorial near the site occupied by the gibbet was created by public subscription in 1937. It commemorates over 100 Covenanters who died on the gallows between 1661 and 1688 during the known as The Killing Time. Their names, where known, are recorded on a nearby plaque, one obdurate prisoners refusal to escape death by swearing loyalty to the Crown prompted the snide remark by the Duke of Rothes that he had chosen to glorify God in the Grassmarket. In 1736 the Grassmarket formed the backdrop to the Porteous Riots which ended in the lynching of a captain of the Town Guard, a plaque near the traditional execution site now marks the spot where an enraged mob brought Captain Porteouss life to a brutal end. A popular story in Edinburgh is that of Margaret Dickson, a fishwife from Musselburgh who was hanged in the Grassmarket in 1724 for murdering her illegitimate baby shortly after birth, after the hanging, her body was taken back to Musselburgh on a cart. However, on the way there she awoke, since, under Scots Law, her punishment had been carried out, she could not be executed for a second time for the same crime. Her resurrection was also to some extent seen as divine intervention, in later life she was referred to as half-hangit Maggie
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Heriot-Watt University
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Heriot-Watt University is a public university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the worlds first mechanics institute and it has campuses in the Scottish Borders, Orkney, Dubai, and Putrajaya in Malaysia. The university is ranked among the Worlds Top 500 by both Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings, Heriot-Watt was established as the School of Arts of Edinburgh by Scottish businessman Leonard Horner on 16 October 1821. Having been inspired by Andersons College in Glasgow, Horner established the School to provide knowledge of science. The institution was initially of modest size, giving lectures two nights a week in rented rooms and boasting a small library of around 500 technical works. It was also oversubscribed, with admissions soon closing despite the cost of 15 shillings for an access to lectures. The School was managed by a board of eighteen directors and primarily funded by sponsors from the middle and upper classes including Robert Stevenson and it first became associated with the inventor and engineer James Watt in 1824, as a means of raising funds to secure permanent accommodation. In 1837, the School of Arts moved to leased accommodation on Adam Square, in honour of the purchase, the School changed its name to the Watt Institution and School of Arts in 1852. Heriot-Watts time as the Watt Institution marked a period for the organisation, as its curriculum broadened to include several subjects beyond mathematics. By 1885, the working class were no longer the majority in an institution that had been created explicitly for them. A shifting class make-up was not the demographic change to affect the student body. This move put the Watt Institution some way ahead of Scottish universities, the decision to admit women was made in large part owing to pressure from local campaigner Mary Burton, who later became the Institutions first female director in 1874. In 1870, the Watt Institution was forced to move following the demolition of Adam Square, after a brief period on Roxburgh Place, it relocated to the newly constructed Chambers Street near where its former site had stood. The move caused the Institution severe financial difficulties, which were compounded by a combination of declining funds from subscribers, in 1873, the Directors turned to George Heriots Trust for support, and agreed to a merger of the Trusts endowment with the Institutions own. Accepting these changes, the Watt Institution officially became Heriot-Watt College in 1885, the Watt Club was founded at the Watt Institution on 12 May 1854, and is today the oldest alumni organisation in the UK. Following the unveiling of a statue of James Watt outside the Institution, after the establishment of Heriot-Watt as a technical college, the new management committee set about extending the institutions buildings and strengthening its academic reputation. In its new form the College was one of only three non-university institutions in the UK with the power to appoint professors, and the first of these was appointed in 1887. In 1902 the College became an institution, while in 1904 it introduced awards for graduating students which were similar to university degrees
10.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
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The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is an art museum on Queen Street, Edinburgh. The gallery holds the collections of portraits, all of which are of. It also holds the Scottish National Photography Collection, the gallery reopened on 1 December 2011 after being closed since April 2009 for the first comprehensive refurbishment in its history, which was carried out by Page\Park Architects. The founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, formed a collection of Scottish portraits in the late 18th century, eventually John Ritchie Findlay stepped in and paid for the entire building, costing £50,000. The museum was established in 1882, before its new building was completed, the famous collection of portraits housed in the Vasari Corridor in Florence remains only accessible to the public on a limited basis. The work generally restores the gallery spaces to their layout, with areas set aside for education, the shop & café. In total the Portrait Gallery has 60% more gallery space after the changes, the cost of the refurbishment was £17.6 million. The museums collection totals some 3,000 paintings and sculptures,25,000 prints and drawings, in the 16th century most painted portraits are of royalty or the more important nobility, the oldest work in the collection is a portrait of James IV of Scotland from 1507. The gallery holds several works by Bronckhorst and his successor, Adrian Vanson, the first significant native Scot to be a portrait painter, George Jamesone only once got the chance to paint his monarch, when Charles I visited Edinburgh in 1633. The collection includes two Jamesone self-portraits and portraits of the Scottish aristocracy, as well as some imagined portraits of heroes of Scotlands past. There are three portraits by Jamesones talented pupil John Michael Wright and ten aristocratic portraits by Sir John Baptist Medina, also wearing tartan is Flora MacDonald, painted by Richard Wilson in London after her arrest for helping Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. The museum owns the iconic portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth and his subjects include Adam Smith, James Beattie and Robert Adam. The later 19th century in Scotland had no such dominant figures, but many fine artists, and saw the beginning of photography
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Alexander Nasmyth
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Alexander Nasmyth was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, a pupil of Allan Ramsay. Nasmyth was born in Edinburgh on 9 September 1758 and he studied at the Royal High School and the Trustees’ Academy and was apprenticed to a coachbuilder. Aged sixteen, he was taken to London by portrait painter Allan Ramsay where he worked on parts of Ramsays works. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh in 1778, where he worked as a portrait painter, offered a loan by Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, Nasmyth left in 1782 for Italy, where he remained two years furthering his studies. In Italy he devoted most of his attention to landscape painting, Nasmyth returned to Scotland where for the next few years he continued his career as a portraitist. He painted some works in the style of Ramsay, but most were conversation pieces with outdoor settings and his portrait of Robert Burns, who became a close friend, is now in the Scottish National Gallery. He also began painting scenery for theatres, an activity he continued for the thirty years. His landscapes are all of places, and architecture is usually an important element. Some works were painted to illustrate the effects that new buildings would have on an area, such as Inverary from the Sea, nasmith had a great interest in engineering, and proposed several ideas that were later widely used, although he never patented any of them. In October 1788, when Patrick Miller sailed the worlds first successful steamship, designed by William Symington, on Dalswinton Loch and he was employed by members of the Scottish nobility in the improvement and beautification of their estates. He designed the temple covering St Bernards Well by the Water of Leith, and bridges at Almondell, West Lothian. In 1815 he was one of those invited to submit proposals for the expansion of Edinburgh New Town, another successful pupil was the painter, teacher, art dealer and connoisseur Andrew Wilson, who had his first art training under Nasmyth. Nasmyth died at home,47 York Place in Edinburgh and he was buried in St Cuthberts Churchyard at the west end of Princes Street. Nasmyths six daughters all became artists and his eldest son, Patrick Nasmyth, studied under his father, then went to London and attracted attention as a landscapist. Another son, James Nasmyth, invented the steam hammer, painting in Scotland, The Golden Age. Oxford, Phaidon in association with the Talbot Rice Art Centre, online version For an account of Andrew Wilson see The Scottish Claude by John Ramm, Antique Dealer & Collectors Guide, July 1997, Vol 50, No.12 Works in the National Galleries of Scotland
12.
Richard Burchett
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Richard Burchett was a British artist and educator on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who was for over twenty years the Headmaster of what later became the Royal College of Art. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, Queen Victorias daughter, Burchett published collections of his lectures as text-books for the South Kensington system of art education, which he helped to devise. Burchett was born in Brighton on 30 January 1815 and he gave evidence to this in 1846-7, by which time he had become a master at the school, remaining on the staff until his death in 1875, from 1852 as Headmaster. He married twice, and had several children, what appear to be a son and grandson are recorded exhibiting paintings in London. Ebenezer Stanley Burchett worked at South Kensington and then was Head Master of the Bedford Park School of Arts & Crafts, in 1870 Richard Burchett is described as formerly of 43 Brompton Square, but now of 8 Bedford Road, Clapham. Burchett was in bad health for the last years of his life. He had only been in the School for 133 days in 1872, in 1870, he began proceedings for bankruptcy, which were still not concluded by his death. Scott says he took to a sort of farming at considerable expense and he began to get into deep water, and into the hands of 20 per cent money-lenders. Still he fought bravely with his difficulties, and even when his salary was placed under trustees. His venture was ill-timed, hitting a period of agricultural depression and his will was probated at less than £200, and Frayling records that a letter from his widow asking for a pension was found unanswered in the school files thirteen years later. Obituaries were published in the Athenaeum, the Art Journal, Burchett exhibited five works, apparently all large history paintings, at the Royal Academy between 1847, including The Death of Marmion, famous in its day according to Hugh Thomas) and 1873. These are rather described as in the Pre-Raphaelite style by the DNB. He exhibited a work at the British Institution in 1855, superstition, you see, turns them into caitiffs. Academy as the exponent of the same would like to crush out of existence. This small painting, which closely approaches a Pre-Raphaelite landscape style, shows a half-harvested cornfield, with tools. But the only figures visible are two clearly middle-class women, no part of the same party as the artist, one sitting against a stook reading a book. Any georgic or realist focus on agriculture is absent his cornfield is just part of a landscape where middle-class people take their leisure, the corn is no more or no less useful than the beaches which we imagine to be in the distance of this brilliantly coloured painting. Here too a more subtle hint of religious feeling is found, there are a number of public paintings by Burchett, with help of his students, commissioned through the school
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