Robert Gavin RSA 1827-1883

He was born in Leith in 1827, and at an early age manifested a taste for Art. Under Thomas Duncan in the Board’s School of Design he studied assiduously, producing numerous pictures, mainly compositions of landscape and children.

In 1868 he went to America, turning his visit to account by delineating several characteristic phases of negro life. After his return to this country—where his stay was but short—he took a journey to the Continent, which resulted in a residence of some years at Tangier, where he evidently found what was congenial to his taste in subject and material.

A series of Moorish pictures, many of them of importance, emanated from his pencil at this time, and from his final return in 1880 he continued to paint this class of subject. My. Gavin was elected an Associate of the Academy in 1855, and attained the rank of Academician in 1879.

Transcribed from the 1883 RSA Annual Report