Grant hope

First british painter to be given a peerage
Royal academy artists 19th century
Burlington house royal academy of arts

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Sir Francis Grant

SIR FRANCIS GRANT, PRA

Edinburgh 1803 – 1878 Melton Mowbray

Francis Grant was the fourth son of Francis Grant, laird of Kilgraston, Perthshire, and his wife Anne Oliphant of Rossie; in 1818, upon his father’s death, he received the handsome patrimony (for a younger son) of £10,000. Abandoning his legal studies at Edinburgh University, he briefly entered the studio of the landscape painter Alexander Nasmyth, but was largely self-taught, encouraged by Sir Walter Scott and Lord Elgin. Handsome, witty and a passionate rider to hounds, Grant spent his winters in Melton Mowbray and, as Queen Victoria commented in her diary, ‘[he] was a gentleman….spent all his fortune, and now paints for money’. In the 1820s he collaborated with John Ferneley Snr on several hunting paintings, providing the portraits of the riders (Grant was renowned for hitting an excellent likeness) while Ferneley portrayed the horses. In 1826 Grant eloped with Amelia Farquharson of Invercauld, who came from one of the most prominent landowning families of Scotland. Sadly, she died

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Introduction

Sir Francis Grant, calotype by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1845, ©National Portrait Gallery, NPG P6(25).

Francis Grant (1803-1878) was a very distinguished portrait painter, who rose to become the first and only Scottish President of the Royal Academy. He was born on 18 Jauary 1803, the fourth son of a Perthshire laird; one of his brothers was General Sir James Hope Grant, an important army officer who served with distinction in India and elsewhere. From such a family he had chances that others could not obtain. After his education at Harrow and Edinburgh High School, he refined his artistic skills by copying masterpieces, and studying under sporting artist John Fernley (1782-1860) in the early 1820s. He loved fox-hunting and first made his name as a painter of sporting scenes, but his reputation grew considerably with his celebrated portrait of Queen Victoria Riding Out, which showed the young Queen riding side-saddle in the company of Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston at Windsor, and which he exhibited in 1840. From now on he was much in demand a

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Francis Grant (artist)

British painter (1803-1878)

Sir Francis GrantPRA (18 January 1803 – 5 October 1878) was a Scottish portrait painter who painted Queen Victoria and many British aristocratic and political figures. He served as President of the Royal Academy.

Life

Grant was the fourth son of Francis Grant, Laird of Kilgraston, near Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, and his wife Anne Oliphant of Rossie. Grant was educated at Harrow School and Edinburgh High School.^[1] His father, a plantation owner in Jamaica, died in 1818, leaving money to his seven children.^[2]

Initially Grant intended to become a lawyer, but he left his studies after a year, and took up painting. He possibly spent time in the Edinburgh studio of Alexander Nasmyth.^[1]

Grant through his second wife gained access to a clientele in the hunting set at Melton Mowbray, where he hunted himself, and took lessons with the artist John Ferneley.^[1] He acquired a reputation as a painter of sporting subjects, and in 1834 exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture called