Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/MacCulloch, Horatio
MACCULLOCH, HORATIO (1805–1867), landscape painter, son of a weaver, was born in Glasgow in November 1805, on the night on which the city was illuminated in honour of the victory of Trafalgar. After having been apprenticed to a house-painter, he became a pupil of John Knox, a local artist, under whom William Leighton Leitch [q. v.], the water-colour painter, and Daniel Macnee [q. v.] were also studying. About 1824 he and Macnee left Glasgow and went first to Cumnock, where they found employment in painting snuff-boxes, and afterwards to Edinburgh, where they entered the estaestablishment of William Home Lizars [q. v.] the engraver. There MacCulloch remained about two years, colouring plates for Dr. Lizars's ‘Anatomy’ and Selby's ‘Ornithology.’ Returning to Glasgow, he commenced sketching out of doors at the Campsie Hills, on the banks of the Clyde, and in Cadzow Forest. In 1829 he began to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy, sending a ‘View on the Clyde,’ which was followed by other landscapes until 1834, when he was elected an associate. A large picture of ‘Cadzow Forest,’ which he exhibited in 1835, attracted much notice, and was highly praised by Professor Wilson. He became an academician in 1838, and then removed to Edinburgh, but many of his summers were spent in Skye, and he often lived for months at Oban. He was the first Scottish artist who carried his colours with him and worked his pictures into life and effect on the spot. He ranged over wide tracts of the highlands, penetrating into the wildest recesses of the mountains, but from time to time returning to the quieter inland lakes of Perthshire and Inverness-shire, or to the lowland rivers, fields, and woods. He became the most popular landscape painter of his day in Scotland, but his works are little known south of the Tweed, possibly because he exhibited once only, in 1844, at the Royal Academy in London. Among his larger works, some of the best are ‘A Scottish Strath,’ ‘Loch an Eilan,’ engraved by William Miller, ‘Loch Katrine,’ ‘Loch Achray,’ ‘Loch Corrinsk,’ ‘Kilchurn Castle,’ ‘Edinburgh from Dalmeny,’ ‘A Dream of the Highlands,’ ‘Misty Corries,’ ‘Glencoe,’ ‘Lord Macdonald's Deer Forest in Skye,’ and ‘Loch Maree.’ His ‘Inverlochy Castle,’ ‘Evening,’ and ‘A Lowland River’ are in the National Gallery of Scotland. The last named picture has been engraved by William Forrest.
MacCulloch died at St. Colm's, Trinity, Edinburgh, on 24 June 1867, and was buried in Warriston cemetery. Two portraits of him by Sir Daniel Macnee are in the National Gallery of Scotland.
[Scotsman, 25 June 1867; Art Journal, 1867, p. 187; Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, 1875, iii. 11–13; Exhibition Catalogues of the Royal Scottish Academy, 1829–1867.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.189
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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