Walter Geikie RSA (10 November 17951 August 1837) was a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

painter.

Life

He was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

on 10 November 1795. At the age of two, he had a "nervous fever" which left him

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

. Through the careful attention of his father he obtained a good education. Before he had the advantage of the instruction of a master he had attained considerable proficiency in sketching both figures and landscapes from nature, and in 1812 he was admitted into the drawing academy of the board of Scottish manufactures. He first exhibited in 1815, and was elected an associate of the

Royal Scottish Academy The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) is the country's national academy of art. It promotes contemporary art, contemporary Scottish art. The Academy was founded in 1826 by eleven artists meeting in Edinburgh. Originally named the Scottish Academy ...

in 1831, and a fellow in 1834. In the 1830s Walter was living with his father, Archibald Geikie, a hairdresser and perfumer, at 2 Drummond Street in the south side of the city. Owing to his want of feeling for color, Geikie was not a successful painter in oils, but he sketched in

India ink India ink (British English: Indian ink; also Chinese ink) is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. In ...

with great truth and humor the scenes and characters of Scottish lower-class life in his native city. A series of etchings which exhibit very high excellence were published by him in 1829-1831 and a collection of eighty-one of these was republished posthumously in 1841, with a biographical introduction by Sir

Thomas Dick Lauder Sir Thomas Dick Lauder of Fountainhall, 7th Baronet, FRSE FSA (Scot) LLD (13 August 178429 May 1848) was a Scottish author. He served as Secretary to the Board of Manufactures (1839–), on the Herring Fisheries Board, at the Royal Instituti ...

, Bart. Duncan Macmillan has described him as producing "images that are absolutely radical in their assertion of the inalienable nature of human dignity."Macmillan, Duncan (1980), ''Scotland and the Art of Nationalism'', in ''

Cencrastus ''Cencrastus'' was a magazine devoted to Scottish and international literature, arts and affairs, founded after the Referendum of 1979 by students, mainly of Scottish literature, at Edinburgh University, and with support from Cairns Craig, then a ...

'' No. 4, Winter 1980-81, pp. 33 - 35, He died on 1 August 1837 and was buried in an unmarked grave in

Greyfriars Kirkyard Greyfriars Kirkyard is the graveyard surrounding Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located at the southern edge of the Old Town, Edinburgh, Old Town, adjacent to George Heriot's School. Burials have been taking place since the late 1 ...

, however a memorial was erected to his memory on the western boundary wall in 1996.

External links

Extended biography

Some samples of his works

References

1795 births 1837 deaths Artists from Edinburgh 19th-century Scottish painters Scottish male painters Royal Scottish Academicians Scottish deaf people Deaf artists Burials at Greyfriars Kirkyard 19th-century Scottish male artists British artists with disabilities {{Scotland-painter-stub

Life

Further reading

External links

References