John Pettie, R.A., H.R.S.A. / Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work

BIRKET FOSTER, R.W.S. KATE GREENAWAY GEORGE MORLAND

Portrait of John Pettie
Like many great painters, John Pettie was of humble origin. Born in Edinburgh in 1839, he was the son of a tradesman who, having reached some prosperity, purchased a business in the village of East Linton and moved there with his family in 1852. The boy was born with art in his blood, and Nature never intended him for the dull and respectable vocation to which his father was anxious that he should succeed. More than once, when despatched on an errand to storeroom or cellar, he was discovered making drawings on the lid of a wooden box or the top of a cask, totally oblivious of his journey and its object. A portrait of the village carrier and his donkey, done when he was a boy of fifteen, struck neighbouring critics as being almost uncanny, and overcame even his father's objections to art as a possible career.
Greatly daring, his mother carried off her son to Edinburgh, a bundle of drawings beneath his arm, to visit Mr. James Drummond, one of the leading members of the Royal Scottish Academy. Much better make him stick to business, was his verdict, after listening to the mother's story. But his tone changed when he had seen the drawings. Not a word was uttered while he turned them over; but then, handing them back, he said: Well, madam, you can put that boy to what you like, but he'll die an artist!
With every encouragement Pettie now entered the Trustees' Academy, where he became a student under Robert Scott Lauder, R.S.A. Among Pettie's fellow-students were George Paul Chalmers, W. Q. Orchardson, J. MacWhirter, Hugh Cameron, Peter Graham, Tom Graham, and W. McTaggart. They were destined to form a School which breathed new life into Scottish art and inaugurated a fresh epoch. All of them gave free expression to their own personality, but one and all made beautiful colour their highest ideal.
In 1858 Pettie exhibited his first picture at the Royal Scottish Academy; and in 1860 made his first venture at the Royal Academy in London with The Armourers, which was hung on the line. It was followed in 1861 by What d' ye lack, madam? a picture of the saucy 'prentice in Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. With the exhibition of this picture his success was assured, and the encouragement he received led him to leave the North and seek his future in the greater world of London.