Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/183

Rh posterior to 1586. Of the private life of this distinguished man few particulars are known; and of these few a portion rest on rather doubtful authority. Previously to his appearance, no man had so far succeeded in attracting the national attention of Scotland to productions in painting, as to render an artist a person whose appearance in the country was to be greatly marked: at that period of our history, too, men had other matters to occupy their minds; and it may well be believed, that, in passing through the fiery ordeal of the times, many men who in peace and prosperity might have had their minds attracted to the ornamental arts, were absorbed in feelings of a very different order, which hardly allowed them an opportunity of knowing, far less of indulging in the elegant occupations of peace. The father of Jamesone was Andrew Jamesone, burgess of guild of Aberdeen, and his mother was Marjory Anderson, daughter of David Anderson, one of the magistrates of that city. What should have prompted the parents of the young painter to adopt the very unusual measure of sending their son from a quiet fireside in Aberdeen, to study under Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp, must remain a mystery. The father is said to have been an architect, and it is probable that he had knowledge enough of art to remark the rising genius of his child, and was liberal enough to perceive the height to which the best foreign education might raise the possessor of that genius. If a certain Flemish building projecting into one of the narrow streets of Aberdeen, and known by the name of "Jamesone's house," be the production of the architectural talents of the elder Jamesone, as the period of the style may render not unlikely, he must have been a man of taste and judgment. Under Rubens, Jamesone had for his fellow scholar Sir Anthony Vandyke, and the early intercourse of these two artists had the effect of making the portraits of each be mistaken for those of the other. In 1620, Jamesone returned to Aberdeen, and established himself as a portrait-painter. He there, on the 12th of November, 1621, married Miss Isobel Tosh, a lady with whom he seems to have enjoyed much matrimonial felicity, and who, if we may judge by her husband's representation of her in one of his best pictures, must have been a person of very considerable attractions; he had by her several children, of whom the sons seem to have all met early deaths, a daughter being the only child he left behind him.