Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Scott, David
SCOTT, DAVID (1806–1849), painter, brother of William Bell Scott [q. v.] and the fifth son of Robert Scott [q. v.], the engraver, was born in the Parliament Stairs, High Street, Edinburgh, on 10 or 12 Oct. 1806. His father was a stern Calvinist, and the loss of his four elder sons by an epidemic when David was only a year old increased the gloom of a household where ‘merriment was but another name for folly’ (cf. Scott's Memoir of David Scott). His melancholy temperament and morbid habit of self-anatomy were cultivated by the influences of his home, which, some time after the birth of two brothers and a sister, was moved to St. Leonards, near Edinburgh. He was sent to school, but was chiefly instructed by his father, and learnt Latin and a little Greek. The chief amusement of the family was drawing, and among the stimulants to David's active imagination were William Blake's illustrations to Blair's ‘Grave.’ At this time he wrote many verses on such themes as time, death, and eternity. When about nineteen his father's health broke down, and for a short time he had to turn to engraving as a means of support for the family; but his heart was fixed upon imaginative design, and in a sketch, inscribed ‘Character of David Scott, 1826,’ he has represented himself seated at the engraving-table with clenched hands and an expression of despair. He was soon allowed to have his way, and was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Life Academy Association in 1827. He set to work on a huge picture of ‘Lot and his Daughters fleeing from the Cities of the Plain,’ not finished till 1829. In 1828 he exhibited at the Scottish Academy ‘The Hopes of Early Genius dispelled by Death.’ To these pictures he added ‘Fingal, or the Spirit of Lodi,’ ‘The Death of Sappho,’ and ‘Wallace defending Scotland’ (a small work), before he was elected an associate of the Scottish Academy in 1830. In 1831 he published six Blake-like designs in outline, under the title of ‘Monograms of Man,’ and in the same year he commenced twenty-five outline illustrations to Coleridge's ‘Ancient Mariner.’ These designs, which are of extraordinary power and in close sympathy with the weird imagination of the poet, were published by Mr. A. Hill of Edinburgh, and by Ackermann in London in 1837, but did not meet with the recognition they deserved. In 1832 he contributed five small plates to ‘The Casquet of Literary Gems,’ and exhibited at the Scottish Academy ‘Sarpedon carried by Death and Sleep,’ ‘Nimrod,’ ‘Pan,’ ‘Aurora,’ and a sketch of ‘Burying the Dead.’ In the same year his picture of ‘Lot’ was rejected at the British Institution on account of its size. In the autumn of 1832 he went to Italy, where fresh disappointment awaited him. He was satisfied with none of the great masters. The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel appeared to him ‘powerfully executed but full of defects.’ His industry in Italy was prodigious, but his health was very weak. Early in 1833 he executed a series of very careful anatomical drawings from subjects in the hospital of the Incurabile, but the principal result of his visit abroad was an immense picture of ‘Discord,’ which was meant to typify by the rebellion of son against father the overthrow of the old order by the new. It was exhibited at the Scottish Academy in 1840 together with ‘Philoctetes left in the Isle of Lemnos,’ ‘Cupid sharpening his Arrows,’ and ‘The Crucifixion.’ In the same year he sent to the exhibition of the Royal Academy the first of several pictures which he now painted from subjects in national history. This was ‘Queen Elizabeth at the Globe Theatre viewing the Performance of “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”’ It was hung high and passed unnoticed, a circumstance which, coupled with the rejection, two years before, of his ‘Achilles addressing the Manes of Patroclus,’ prevented him from ever sending another work to the London exhibitions, with the exception of ‘Pan’ in 1845. Soon after his return to Scotland he set up a large studio at Easter Dalry House, near Edinburgh, where he painted ‘Peter the Hermit preaching the Crusades,’ ‘The Alchemist lecturing on the Elixir Vitæ,’ an altar-piece of ‘The Descent from the Cross’ for the catholic chapel in Edinburgh, and a number of other historical and poetical pictures. One of the latter, a small picture of ‘The Duke of Gloucester taken into the Water Gate of Calais,’ was lent by Mr. R. Carfrae, who bought a great many of his works, to the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1875. In Edinburgh his remarkable powers attracted a considerable circle of enthusiastic admirers and friends, among whom were the Rev. George Gilfillan, Dr. John Brown, author of ‘Rab and his Friends,’ whose portrait he painted; Mrs. Catherine Crowe (‘Night Side of Nature’), and Professor John Pringle Nichol [q. v.] He also received visits from Margaret Fuller and Emerson, whose portrait he painted. This is now in the Public Library at Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
In 1839 and 1840 he contributed to ‘Blackwood's Magazine’ a series of articles, mainly occupied with the spirit and motives of art. The first was called ‘The Peculiarities of Thought and Style,’ and the others were upon Raphael, Titian, Leonardo, the Caracci, and Caravaggio. A fragment of another upon ‘Rubens, his Contemporaries, and Modern Painters,’ was published, together with a ‘Memoir’ (1850), by his brother, W. B. Scott.
In 1841 he commenced a great picture, now in the Trinity House at Leith, called ‘Vasco de Gama, the discoverer of India, encountering the Spirit of the Storm as he passes the Cape of Good Hope.’ It was exhibited by the artist, but the venture resulted in a loss of 70l. In 1842 he sent two cartoons to the competition for the paintings in the new Houses of Parliament—‘Drake witnessing the Destruction of the Armada’ and ‘Wallace defending Scotland’—but neither these nor the two frescoes he sent in two years later attracted any notice. He also published a pamphlet entitled ‘British, French, and German Painting, being a reference to the points which render the pro posed painting of the new Houses of Parliament important as a public measure.’ In 1845 he sent to the Scottish Academy an extraordinary picture of ‘The Dead rising after the Crucifixion,’ with figures larger than life, ‘a work,’ according to his brother, ‘to be looked upon once, with awe and wonder, not to be imitated, not to be spoken lightly of.’ In 1847 he produced, in violent contrast to this terrible work, a picture called ‘The Triumph of Love,’ in which he indulged in a riot of colour. Besides many powerful separate drawings of such subjects as ‘The Sirens’ and ‘Self-accusation, or Man and his Conscience,’ he executed sets of drawings of ‘The Anchorite,’ ‘Unhappy Love,’ and ‘Scenes in the Life and Thoughts of a Student Painter.’ Among his last works were forty illustrations to ‘The Pilgrim's Progress,’ and a very beautiful series of eighteen imaginative designs to the ninth edition (1851) of Professor Nichol's ‘Architecture of the Heavens.’ Both series were engraved and published after his death. His last picture was ‘Hope passing over the Sky of Adversity.’ Since his residence in Italy Scott's health had always been feeble, and he died at Easter Dalry House on 5 March 11849. On his deathbed, at the early age of forty-three, he said: ‘If I could but have time yet, I think I could meet the public in their own way more and yet do what I think good.’ An etching of his head, drawn two days before his death by his brother William, is reproduced in the latter's ‘Autobiography’ (i. 261).
Scott was a man of undoubted genius and spiritual imagination, perpetually setting himself tasks beyond his grasp. Unfortunately, even when he reached a high measure of success, as in his illustrations to ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘The Architecture of the Heavens,’ he failed to reap the appreciation which his soul desired. In many respects like Benjamin Haydon, though of finer fibre and less robust physique, he was the victim of his own temperament, and his life was a series of disappointments, the result of restless and ill-judged ambition. For some time before his death his perpetual sufferings were augmented by a nervous disease which chiefly affected the muscles of his neck. He kept a diary which painfully reflects the sufferings of a highly sensitive mind tortured by disappointment, self-distrust, religious doubt, hopeless love, and, latterly, ill health. He wrote too a great many poems, chiefly during his last years. One of these, called ‘Trafalgar, or British Deed,’ he offered in vain for publication. His face and figure were of uncommon beauty, and in his portrait of himself at the age of twenty-five he appears the very type of gloomy poetic genius. Most of his works are in private collections in Scotland, but ‘The Vintager’ and ‘Ariel and Caliban’ are in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, and ‘Achilles addressing the Manes of Patroclus’ in the Art Gallery at Sunderland. An exhibition of his works was held at 29 Castle Street, Edinburgh, in 1849. A reproduction of the fine portrait bust by Sir John Steell, R.S.A., in the National Gallery of Scotland, is prefixed to John M. Gray's ‘David Scott and his Works,’ 1884.
[Scott's Memoir of David Scott, R.S.A.; Autobiographical Notes of William Bell Scott, ed. Minto; Emerson's English Traits; Cunningham's British Painters, ed. Heaton; Life of B. R. Haydon; North British Review, No. xxi.; Hogg's Instructor, vol. iii.; Art Journal, ii. 120; Blackwood, cxxx. 589; Gilchrist's Life of Blake.]