Shady Lane

As a young man Alexander Nasmyth visited Italy where he was exposed to the work of landscape painters such as Claude Lorain and other Italian landscape painters. He returned to Scotland keen to apply what he had learned to the Scottish landscape. He borrowed the Italian Seicento principles of leading the eye into the distance by using several framing layers of trees in the fore and middle ground. In later years he was influenced by Dutch landscape painting with an emphasis on capturing light and weather conditions. Alexander Nasmyth also painted portraits. His most famous painting is the 1787 portrait of his friend the poet Robert Burns. This portrait has been widely reproduced as it is regarded as one of very few accurate likenesses of Burns. There are two paintings in the Dick Institute Collection based on this painting. One is a careful copy by James Tannock, the other a more recent work by artist Allan Ramsay.