Allan Ramsay: The Enlightened Artist

Join Dr Eugene Barilo Von Reisberg for a lecture exploring mid-eighteenth-century elite portrait specialist, Allan Ramsey (1713-84).

Ramsay was the first Scottish painter to attain the highly prestigious post of the Principal Painter to the English Court. It is to him that we owe one of the most swaggering representations of the youthful King George III and some of the most sensitive portrayals of his wife Queen Charlotte. His portraits of royalty, aristocracy, as well as of Scottish social and cultural elites, are notable for the striking attention to individual physiognomic likeness, sensitive chiaroscuro, and superb technical facility in rendering tactile details of his clients’ fashionable attire.

The widely travelled painter, poet, writer, and philosopher, Ramsay brought an international flair and the spirit of the Enlightenment to the British portrait painting as it transitioned from the grandeur of the Baroque and the intimacy of Rococo to the era of Romanticism.