Born September 7, 1758. Died April 10, 1840.

Alexander Nasmyth, the distinguished Scotch landscape painter, and known also as a man of science, was born at Edinburgh. He came early in life to London, where he was for some time the pupil of Allen Ramsay, painter to George III. He resided afterwards in Rome for several years, during which time he studied portrait, history, and landscape painting.

From Rome, Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh, where he settled as a portrait painter, and executed his well-known painting of Robert Burns-the most authentic likeness of this great poet. Having, however, a decided taste for landscape painting, he ultimately confined himself to this branch of art; but much of his time was occupied in teaching, in which he was very successful. His landscapes, which are very numerous, were, many of them, reminiscences of Italian scenery, and although wanting in originality and vigour, possess so much beauty and grace as to have caused their author to acquire the name of the 'Scottish Claude.'

Mr. Nasmyth was a favourite in society, and was the leading teacher in art of the highest classes in Scotland; during his later years being commonly looked up to as the patriarch of Scottish art. He not only took much interest in the proceedings of the artistic societies of Edinburgh, but often raised an influential voice in respect to the alterations making in that city; and was one of the three successful competitors between whom the first prize offered for the best plan for laying out and building the New Town of Edinburgh was equally divided.

Mr. Nasmyth spent much of his time in scientific experiments, and was the inventor of 'bow and string bridges,' and of a method of driving the screw-propellers of vessels by direct action, in front of the rudder. Much of his leisure time was spent in a workshop which he had fitted up for himself, and which proved the nursery of the early mechanical genius of the present James Nasmyth, the celebrated engineer.

Soon after his return from Italy, Alexander Nasmyth married the sister of Sir James Foulis of Woodhall Colinton, by whom he had a family of three sons and five daughters, all of whom inherited more or less their father's talents, while the eldest, Patrick, has acquired a separate renown of no inconsiderable extent, for the beauty of his landscapes.

Alexander Nasmyth died in York Place, Edinburgh, at the age of eighty-three, and was interred in the West Church burying-ground of that city.—English CyclopÆdia. London, 1857.—Catalogue of Gallery of Portraits of Inventors, &c., in the South Kensington Museum.