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- 1 - Ramsay was influenced by the pastel technique of contemporary French artists like Quentin de la Tour, but was also dedicated to a natural style of portraiture based on direct observation.
He married firstly Anne Bayne, d. 1743 and completed a portrait of her probably painted in Edinburgh at the time of the couple's engagement. They married in 1739 and Anne died four years later giving birth to their third child.
He married secondly Margaret Lindsay. Margaret and Allan eloped in 1752 and married in the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh. Margaret was never forgiven by her father, Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, Perthshire, for marrying what he considered a lowly, albeit highly successful, artist.
He visited the Island of Ischia during his third trip to Italy in 1776. Ramsay suffered great discomfort after injuring his right arm in 1773, but he continued production of his drawings and portraits.
2 - RAMSAY LANE GARDEN - Allan Ramsay (1713-84), a well-known artist, settled in London, and became portrait-painter to George III and Queen Charlotte. He acquired the estate of Kinkell, by which he is generally known, to distinguish him from his father. By some, however, the name is derived from Ramsay's land, the town house of the Ramsays of Cockpen, one of whom, Sir Andrew, forcibly held the Provost's Chair for some fifteen years in the days of Charles II. This house stood at the east side of the top of the lane, where Dr. Guthrie's Ragged School flourished later, Wilson, i.187. Marked 'Cockpen' by Kerr.
[ http://www.edinburgh.org.uk/STREETS/part1/r.htm ]
3 - Allan Ramsay (1713-84)
Allan Ramsay was the first great Scottish painter. Born in Edinburgh, he was the eldest child of the poet Allan Ramsay, and showed a prodigious talent in drawing from an early age. After an apprenticeship in London, and helped by his father's fame, he began to build a reputation as a portraitist among Edinburgh's fashionable society. A few years later he visited Italy to study Italian portraiture, and returned to Britain with a delicate, informal style.
Ramsay was regarded as the equal of Sir Joshua Reynolds in portraiture, and his superior in the painting of women, and had a genius for capturing the humanity of his sitters. He painted many of the most well known characters of the Scottish Enlightenment, and associated with intellectuals such as David Hume and Adam Smith. In 1767 the patronage of the 3rd Earl of Bute- won him appointment as Court Painter to George III. In 1773 he injured his arm in a fall and was unable to paint. Undaunted he threw himself into his other great passions: philosophy and literature.
[ An Illustrated History of Scotland by Elisabeth Fraser pub. 1997 ]
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