Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/175

 printed privately and posthumously in 1865. He showed, we there learn, an early fondness for art, and in the study of it spent the greater part of 1829 and 1830 in Rome. Returning, he decided to become an architect. He served his articles and remained for some years afterwards in the office of Messrs. Rickman & Hutchison of Birmingham. Mr. Rickman is well known as a prime mover in the English Gothic revival; Bell was his favourite pupil, and became his intimate friend.

As a result of this education and companionship, Bell acquired a remarkable knowledge of Gothic architecture. He was a correct and elegant draughtsman. Thirty of the engravings in Le Keux's 'Memorials of Cambridge' are from his drawings. His 'Dryburgh Abbey,' engraved by William Miller, is no less remarkable. For about twenty-seven years he practised as an architect in Edinburgh. 'His larger works were not numerous, but they are of great merit and evince refined taste. The country houses he erected were always justly admired. The extensive range of premises in Glasgow, known by the name of Victoria Buildings, which he designed for Mr. Archibald Orr Ewing. . . . exhibit a very pure specimen of Scotch Gothic, finely adapted to commercial purposes, and form one of the most imposing elevations in the city.' Bell was a member of the Institute of Scottish Architects. In 1839 he was appointed secretary to the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland. He was nominated for the office by the late Professor Wilson, and retained it until his death. In the printed reports of that society will be found graceful and sufficient tributes to the abilities and the zeal of its secretary. He was one of the leading witnesses examined by the select committee appointed to inquire into the subject of art unions. He was secretary also to the committee concerned with the direction of the Edinburgh Wellington Testimonial. Bell had not only 'a learned knowledge of art all it a departments, but was himself a cultivated artist. . . . His water-colour drawings are of a high order of excellence and are finished with the greatest delicacy.' His poems were printed only for private circulation, 'in the belief that they possessed much originality and beauty.' He died, in his fifty-sixth year, on 28 Feb. 1865.

[Bell's Poems, printed 'in memoriam' and not for publication, 1865; Proceedings of the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland; Scotsman, 2 March 1865.]

 BELL, MARIA (d. 1825), amateur painter, the daughter of an architect named Hamilton, was the pupil of her brother William Hamilton, R.A., and received some instruction from Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose pictures she copied with much skill. She copied likewise the works of Rubens at Carlton House, among which was a 'Holy Family,' which was highly commended. between the years 1809 and 1824 she exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere several figure-subjects and portraits, among the latter being in 1816 those of Sir Matthew Wood, Bart., lord mayor of London, and of her husband. She also practised modelling, and exhibited two busts at the Royal Academy in 1819. She married Sir Thomas Bell, sheriff of London, who was knighted in 1816, and died in 1824, and whose portrait was engraved by William Dickinson after a painting by her. Lady Bell died in Dean Street, Soho, on 9 March 1825. Her own portrait has been engraved by Edward Scriven from a miniature by W. S. Lethbridge.

[Gent. Mag. 1825, i. 570; Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878.]

 BELL, PATRICK (1799–1869), one of the first inventors of the reaping machine, was born at Mid-Leoch, a farm of which his father, George Bell, was tenant, in the parish of Auchterhouse, a few miles northwest of Dundee, in April 1799. When he was a young man studying for the ministry at the university of St. Andrews, he turned his attention to the construction of a machine which might lessen the labour of harvesting, This was in 1827, and in the following year a machine which he had made was tried on a farm in Perthshire belonging to his brother, Mr. George Bell. For a long time Dr. Bell was considered to be the original inventor of the machine, though claims were also put forward on behalf of McConnick in America. It has, however, been ascertained, with tolerable certainty, that John Common, of Denwick, was the first to produce a machine having the essential principles of the modern reaper. This was done in 1812, as is proved by an entry in the minutes of a committee of the Society of Arts in that year. There is also evidence to show that Common s machine was really the original of that brought out by McConnick, and shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851. It should be added that there were before this many experimental reaping machines; but those of Common and Bell seem to have been the only two which were in any way successful. Dr. Bell never took out a patent for his machine, but it was worked regularly from the time of its first construction until about 1868, when it was purchased for the museum of the Patent Office, where it now