Elected ARSA: 10 November 1880
Born in Edinburgh on 20 May 1830, George Aikman was the ninth child of an engraver, also named George Aikman (1788-1865) and his wife, Alison Mackay (d. in or before 1859). The younger George received an early and practical education in art, namely assisting his father with the mammoth task of drawing and engraving all of the images for the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Aikman was also privately educated and then attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh. Afterwards, he apprenticed for his father, attended the Trustees’ Academy which was directed at the time by Robert Scott Lauder, RSA (1803-1869) and then worked as a journeyman in London and Manchester. Upon his return, Aikman became a partner in his father’s business.
He first exhibited at the RSA in 1850 and continued to do so regularly. In 1859 he married Elizabeth Barnett (c. 1833-1912) with whom he had two sons and three daughters. Early in the 1870s, after attending the life school of the RSA, Aikman stopped working in engravings and focused on painting in both oil and watercolour. His oeuvre features a great deal of variety in subject matter as well as medium, including land and seascapes, genre and portrait, in etching, mezzotint, oil and watercolour. He was elected ARSA in 1880 and died on 8 January 1905.
