Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/80

 the inside of the academy, with an exact portrait of Robert Foulis in the act of criticising a large picture, and giving instructions to his principal painter about it.

In the year 1764, some of his performances attracted the notice of lord Cathcart, whose seat, Shaw Park, was situated in Clackmannanshire near Alloa. Lady Cathcart introduced him to the notice of lady Frances Erskine, daughter of the insurgent earl of Mar, and mother of the gentleman to whom the peerage was restored in 1824; as also to lady Charlotte Erskine, to Mrs Abercromby of Tullibody, mother of Sir Ralph, and to some other personages of distinction in the neighbourhood of his birth-place. By the associated purses of these kind patrons, Allan was enabled to go to Italy, where he studied with unremitting application for eleven years. During his residence there, lady Cathcart used to write to him with all the care and affection of a mother. In 1773, while living at Rome, he gained the prize medal given by the academy of St Luke for the best specimen of historical composition; being the only Scotchman who had ever reached that honour, besides Mr Gavin Hamilton.

After his return in 1777, Allan resided for about two years in London; but, falling into a bad state of health, he was ordered home to Scotland for a change of air. Soon after his arrival in Edinburgh, he was appointed successor to Runciman (deceased), as master and director of the academy established by the Board of Trustees for Manufactures and Improvements, for the purpose of diffusing a knowledge of the principles of the fine arts and elegance of design, in the various manufactures and works which required to be figured and ornamented; a charge for which he was peculiarly well qualified, by the extensive knowledge he possessed of every branch of the art. He retained the situation till his death.

Allan was much admired for his talents in composition, the truth with which he delineated nature, and the characteristic humour which distinguished his pictures, drawings, and etchings. There are several engravings from his pictures, as, "The Origin of Painting, or the Corinthian maid drawing the shadow of her lover," and four in aqua-tinta by Paul Sandby, from drawings made by Allan when at Rome, representing the sports during the carnival. Several of the figures were portraits of persons well known to the English who visited Rome between 1770 and 1780. There is one caricature by Allan, which is well known to Scottish collectors: it represents the interior of a church or meeting-house at Dunfermline, at the moment when an imprudent couple are rebuked by the clergyman. There is a drollery about the whole of this performance that never fails to amuse. The alliance of his genius to that of our national poets, led Allan, in 1788, to publish an edition of the Gentle Shepherd, with characteristic drawings. He also published a collection of the most humorous of the old Scottish songs, each illustrated by a characteristic etching. At his death, which happened on the 6th of August, 1796, he left a series of drawings designed for the poems of Burns, in an equally graphic and humorous style. There is one property which runs through all the designs of Allan, and by which his productions may be distinguished at the most casual glance: this is a peculiar elegance of form which he always gives to the limbs of his figures—elegance to such a degree, that, in many cases, it may be pronounced out of nature.

Allan, by his wife, whom he married in 1788, left one son, bearing his own name, and who was sent out as a cadet to India, and one daughter named Barbara. In person, our Scottish Hogarth, as he was called, had nothing attractive. The misfortunes attending his entrance into the world were such as nothing in after life could repair. "His figure was a bad resemblance of his humorous precursor of the English metropolis. He was under the middle size; of a slender, feeble make; with a long, sharp, lean, white, coarse face, much pitted by the small-pox,