Background
He was born at Athelstaneford near Haddington. Adam Skirving"s son Archibald was born at Athelstaneford near Haddington.
He was born at Athelstaneford near Haddington. Adam Skirving"s son Archibald was born at Athelstaneford near Haddington.
All three of these wrote verses but it is Adam who is best remembered as a songwriter. After studying both in Rome and London, he settled in Edinburgh, where he obtained some fame as a portrait-painter. His most successful portraits were executed in crayon.
The best known is his crayon portrait of Robert Burns, executed partly from Nasmyth"s famous portrait, and partly from Skirving"s recollection of the poet, whom he met, it is said, at Edinburgh in 1786.
This portrait was acquired by Sir Theodore Martin and is in the National Burns Collection. Other of Skirving"s sitters were Alexander Carlyle, Doctor of Divinity, of Inveresk, the mother of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Gavin Hamilton, Isabella Fraser-Tytler, Professor Dugald Stewart, Elizabeth Liddell, and Doctor John Hunter, principal of Saint Andrews University.
Skirving was eccentric, and did not pursue his art industriously. In later life he seldom produced more than one picture a year, his price ranging about one hundred guineas.
He died suddenly at Inveresk Lodge, Inveresk, East Lothian in 1819, and was buried at Athelstaneford churchyard.
Some of his portraits are in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Skirving"s portraits including one of his father and a self-portrait are in the National Galleries of Scotland. He became an artist and he has a few paintings in public collections in the United Kingdom.