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Biography of Allan Ramsay (1713–84)
Scottish painter and connoisseur of Roman antiquity. Fascinated by Italy, Ramsay travelled there four times, first in 1736–38 to train under Francesco Imperiali in Rome and Francesco Solimena in Naples. On his return he settled in London where he established himself in the 1740s as a leading portrait painter until this position was taken over by Joshua Reynolds. The competition between the two artists led Ramsay to develop a distinctive style of female portraiture epitomized in the delicate and graceful portrait of his second wife (1757, National Gallery, Edinburgh). He was an excellent draughtsman and preceded his paintings with numerous sketches and studies. His atmospheric watercolour studies of the Colosseum in Rome and other ancient sites (National Gallery of Scotland) were made during his visit to Italy in 1754–57 in the company of the architect Robert Adam and the draughtsman Charles-Louis Clérisseau. In 1760 Ramsay was appointed Painter in Ordinary to George III and worked mainly on royal commissions, some of which were copies of portraits in the royal collection. The son of a poet, he had a wide range of literary and intellectual interests and contacts. The philosophers David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were among his sitters. He retired from painting in 1773 to write the treatise An Enquiry into the Situation and Circumstances of Horace's Sabine Villa, which he illustrated during his final visit to Italy in 1782–84. He rejected a knighthood and disassociated himself from the Royal Academy.
View paintings by Allan Ramsay
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