Robert Walker Macbeth

Robert Walker Macbeth (30 September 1848, Glasgow - 1 November 1910, Golders Green, London) was a Scottish painter, etcher and watercolourist, specialising in pastoral landscape and the rustic genre. His father was the portrait painter Norman Macbeth.

Life

He studied in London, producing realistic everday scenes and working for "The Graphic". He painted in the Lincolnshire and Somerset countryside, in works influenced by tthose of George Hemming Mason and Frederick Walker. His "The Cast Shoe" was bought by the Chantrey Bequest in 1890, and is now at Tate Britain.

Exhibiting from 1871 at the Royal Academy, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery and the Fine Art Society in London, as well as the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Manchester City Art Gallery, that year (1871) Macbeth was made an associate of the Royal Water Colour Society (only becoming a full member in 1901). He became a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1880, and an honorary member in 1909. In 1882 he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and in 1883 was elected to be a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. In 1883 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and became a full member in 1903.

Bibliography

*Caw, J. L., Scottish Painting 1620-1908, London, 1908
*Wood, Christopher, The Dictionary of Victorian Painters, Woodbridge, 1971
*Johnson, J., and A. Gruetzner, The Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980
*Walkley, Giles, Artists' houses in London 1764-1914, Aldershot, 1994.

External links

* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp02857 Portraits of RW Macbeth] at the National Portrait Gallery
* [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/biog/Macb_RW.htm Biography]