Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/69

 ; and accordingly, in 1707, having sold his paternal estate near Arbroath, that he might leave home untrammelled, he went to Rome, where, during a period of three years, he put himself under the tuition of the best masters. He afterwards visited Constantinople and Smyrna, where the gentlemen of the English factory wished him to engage in the Turkey trade; an overture which ho declined; and returning to Rome, he there renewed his studies for a time. In 1712, he revisited his native country, and commenced practising his profession; but, though his works were admired by the discerning few, he did not meet with adequate encouragement, the public being too poor at that time to purchase elaborate works of art, and the taste for such works being then too imperfectly formed. At this period he formed an intimacy with Allan Ramsay, whose portrait he afterwards painted. John, Duke of Argyle, who equally admired the artist and esteemed the man, regretting that such talents should be lost, at length prevailed upon Aikman, in 1723, to move with all his family to London. There, under the auspices of his distinguished friend, he associated with the most eminent British painters of the age, particularly Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose studies and dispositions of mind were congenial with his own. The duke also recommended him to many people of the first rank, particularly the Earl of Burlington, so well known for his taste in architecture; and he was thus able to be of much service to Thomson, who came to London soon after himself, as a literary adventurer. He introduced the poet of "The Seasons" to the brilliant literary circle of the day—Pope, Swift, Gay, Arbuthnot, &c.—and, what was perhaps of more immediate service, to Sir Robert Walpole, who aimed at being thought a friend to men of genius. Among the more intimate friends of Aikman, was William Somerville, author of "The Chase," from whom he received an elegant tribute of the muse, on his painting a full-length portrait of the poet in the decline of life, carrying him back, by the assistance of another portrait, to his youthful days. This poem was never published in any edition of Somerville's works. Aikman painted, for the Earl of Burlington, a large picture of the royal family of England; all the younger branches being in the middle compartment, on a very large canvas, and on one hand a full-length portrait of Queen Caroline; the picture of the king (George II.)—that king who never could endure " boetry or bainting," as he styled the two arts in his broken English—intended for the opposite side, was never finished, owing to the death of the artist. This was perhaps the last picture brought towards a close by Aikman, and it is allowed to have been in his best style; it came into the possession of the Duke of Devonshire by a marriage alliance with the Burlington family. Some of his earlier works are in the possession of the Argyle and Hamilton families in Scotland; his more mature and mellow productions are chiefly to be found in England, and a large portion at Blickling, in Norfolk, the seat of the Earl of Buckinghamshire; these are chiefly portraits of noblemen, ladies, and gentlemen, friends of the earl. He died June 4, 1731, at his house, in Leicester Fields, and, by his own desire, his body was taken to Scotland for interment; his only son, John (by his wife Marion Lawson, daughter of Mr Lawson, of Cairnmuir, in Peeblesshire), whose death immediately preceded his own, was buried in the same grave with him, in the Greyfriars' churchyard, Edinburgh. A monument was erected over the remains of Mr Aikman, with the following epitaph by Mallet, which has been long since obliterated:--

Dear to the grod and wise, dispraised by none, Here sleep in peace the father and the son.