Background
George Buchan Simpson was born in Dundee on 10 October 1820. His father was Robert Simpson, a shipmaster and later a flax merchant, and his mother was Janet Buchan.
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George B. Simpson
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Education
He was educated at Mr. Gilbert’s School in Meadow Entry, Dundee.
Career
He financed his interests through his wealth acquired as a linen manufacturer and jute merchant in Dundee. He is "Dundee’s Forgotten Maecenas" according to a recent academic paper. He died in Edinburgh on 1 July 1892.
Simpson trained in linen manufacturing with Messrs.
Alexander Easson and Charles Clark at the Dens Works in Dundee. Ritchie, Simpson & Company, which began with flax spinning mills in Maxwellton and Hawkhill.
Later the firm had works in Ward Road, Nelson Street and Lower Pleasance. A decade later the firm had diversified into jute manufacturing.
Simpson’s increasing prosperity by that time enabled him to move to Seafield House in fashionable Broughty Ferry.
(Grove Academy was later built on the site of this house). He began also to rival local patrons in the arts However, a downturn in trade in the 1870s brought an end to his partnership with Ritchie.
He struggled on with his manufacturing business and eventually retired in 1886.
Thereafter he devoted himself to his arts patronage. Simpson supported artistic talent and befriended painters such as William MacTaggart, George Paul Chalmers, West. Q. Orchardson, Sam Bough, James Cassie and Alexander Fraser.
He was strict in what he expected from these artists. "Number Simpson landscape was usually considered complete without the interpolation of a human or animal motif, from boys fishing to cattle grazing." In 1867, Simpson was appointed convener of the committee which organised an art exhibition during the visit of the British Association to Dundee.
Simpson was also an ardent collector of books and all kinds of objets d"art
He had a collection of rare books dating from the fifteenth to the 18th centuries and in October 1879 he displayed this collection in Dundee Museum for benefit of his fellow citizens. His collections of coins and medals were sold off in a sale lasting five days. A collection of Simpson"s correspondence with George P. Chalmers and Edward Pinnington is to be found in the Royal Scottish Academy"s Simpson Collection.
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1870.
Justice of Peace for Forfarshire.
Membership
Member of the Numismatic Society of London
Member of Broughty Ferry School Board.
