The New International Encyclopædia/Scott, William Bell

SCOTT, William Bell (1811-90). A Scotch poet and painter, born at Saint Leonard's, Edinburgh, he was a son of Robert Scott, the engraver, and a younger brother of David Scott (q.v.), the distinguished painter. He was educated at the Edinburgh High School, studied art at the Government academy and in the British Museum, and worked with his father at engraving. In 1837 he went to London and began his career as etcher and painter. In 1844 he was appointed master of the Government schools of design at Newcastle-on-Tyne, a post which he occupied with distinction till 1864. In the meantime he had executed a series of large pictures for Sir Walter Trevelyan at Wallington Hall, taking his subjects from border history and legend; and a few years later he also painted a series of designs from the King's Quhair for the stairway at Penkill Castle in Perthshire. His last years were passed at Chelsea, near his intimate friend D. G. Rossetti (q.v.), and at Penkill Castle with another friend, Miss Boyd. Among Scott's published designs is William Blake: Etchings from His Works (1878). On art or artists he wrote a Memoir of David Scott (1850): Albert Dürer: His Life and Works (1869); The British School of Sculpture (1872); Our British Landscape Painters (1872); Murillo and the Spanish School (1873): and works on the modern schools in France. Belgium, and Germany. His own illustrations added to the charm of these books. Scott began writing verse while living in Edinburgh. He was strongly under the influence of Blake and Shelley and later he came under the spell of Rossetti. His finest poems are contained in Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc. (1875), and in A Poet's Harvest Home (1882). A love for mysticism is most marked in The Year of the World (1846). After his death there appeared, under the editorship of W. Minto, Autobiographical Notes (London, 1892), interesting reminiscences of fifty years, particularly of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites (q.v.).