David Scott was a Scottish painter. He was known for his serious historical subjects in a visionary style.
Background
David Scott was born on October 10 or 12, 1806, in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. He was the fifth son of Robert Scott, engraver, and brother of William Bell Scott. His father was stern Calvanist, and the loss of his four elder sons by epidemic when David was only one year old increased the gloom of household where 'merriment was but another na,e for folly'. His melanchloly temperament and morbid habit of self-anatomy were cultivated by the influences of his home, which, after some time after the bith of two brothers and sisters, was moved to St. Leonards, near Edinburgh.
Education
David Scott attended the Royal High School, and studied art under his father.
Career
At the age of nineteen, his father's health broke down, and for a short time he had to turn to engraving as means of support the family. Besides, his heart was fixed upon imaginative design.
In 1828, David Scott exhibited at the Scottish Academy his first oil picture, the "Hopes of Early Genius dispelled by Death," which was followed by "Cain, Nimrod, Adam and Eve singing their Morning Hymn," and other subjects of a poetic and imaginative character. By the late 1830s and 1840s, one of his intimate friends was the chemist Dr. Samuel Brown, whose star- spangled noctural portrait Scott painted in 1844.
In 1839 and 1840, he contributed to a "Blackwood's Magazine" a series of articles, mainly occupied with the spirit and motives of art. The fiers was called "The Pecuilarities of Thought and Style", and others were upon Raphael, Titian, Leonardo, the Caracci, and Cavaraggio.
Scott also executed several remarkable series of designs. Two of these are the "Monograms of Man" and the illustrations to Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.
Personality
David Scott was a man of undoubted genius and spiritual imagination, perpetually setting himself tasks beyond his gasp.
