Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Henderson, Andrew (1783-1835)
HENDERSON, ANDREW (1783–1835), portrait-painter, born at Cleish, near Kinross in Scotland, in 1783, was son of the gardener to Lord-chief-commissioner William Adam [q. v.] at Blair-Adam, Kinross-shire. He was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to his brother Thomas in General Scott's gardens at Bellevue, Edinburgh, and was subsequently employed in the Earl of Kinnoull's gardens at Dupplin and in the Earl of Hopetoun's near Edinburgh. His constitution not being strong enough for outdoor work, he obtained a situation in a manufacturing house in Paisley, and eventually became foreman in Messrs. Hepburn & Watt's establishment there. His love of pictorial art led him, however, to attend a drawing-school, and eventually to surrender his position in order to become an artist. In March 1809 he went to London, and studied for three or four years in the Royal Academy. In 1813 he returned to Scotland, settled at Glasgow as a portrait-painter, practising with considerable local success for about twenty years, and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1828, 1829, and 1830. Henderson was a man of extremely original character, of fiery temperament and violent impetuosity in speech, yet full of broad humour, and much beloved by his intimate friends. He was large and ungainly in figure, but possessed a sharp, shrill voice. In 1832 he published at Edinburgh a collection of ‘Scottish Proverbs,’ with etchings by himself, and a preface by his intimate friend W. Motherwell; a second edition was published in London in 1876 without the etchings. Henderson, Motherwell, and a third intimate friend and equally original character, John Donald Carrick [q. v.], were the chief contributors to ‘The Laird of Logan; Anecdotes and Tales illustrative of the Wit and Humour of Scotland’ (posthumously published 1841). The book contains many anecdotes of Henderson, and the preface supplies biographies of the three friends. Henderson died of apoplexy in Glasgow, 9 April 1835, and was buried in the necropolis. A portrait by himself was exhibited by Dr. William Young in the Glasgow Exhibition of British Artists, 1835. Henderson was an original member of the Society of Dilettanti, founded in Glasgow in 1825.
[Biography in the preface to The Laird of Logan; J. Irving's Book of Eminent Scotsmen; private information.]