John Irvine ARSA 1805-1888

His father had been in the Royal Navy, and was one of the few saved from the Sceptre, wrecked in Table Bay in 1799. He early displayed a taste for drawing, but was left in his tenth year, when his father died, to fight his own way in the world. This he bravely endeavoured to do, but, bent on studying Art, and to earn a livelihood, he left his island home before he was twenty-one and came to Edinburgh.

Shortly afterwards, however, he proceeded to London, where in the Schools of the Royal Academy he studied with great assiduity, and gained a medal in 1828 for his studies from the antique. Herbert, Etty, and Maclise were among his fellow-students, and with them he was on terms of friendly intimacy.

John Irvine exhibited a portrait in the first Exhibition of the Scottish Academy in 1827, and in the following Exhibition he had two portraits, He returned to Edinburgh in 1832, and from that year till 1858, notwithstanding a break of three years’ residence again in London, from 1840 to 1843, he contributed liberally to the Annual Exhibitions.

The state of his health in 1858 induced him to go to Melbourne in Australia, where his son was in business, and for three years he did not fail to send a work to the Exhibition from that distant land. He finally ceased to exhibit in the Academy in 1862.

From that time, however, till nearly three years ago, he produced a number of portraits of the notables of Otago, to which place, after a brief stay in Melbourne, he had removed in 1863.

He was President of the Art Society of Dunedin, and took a deep interest in its progress. Professedly a portrait-painter, he also produced a number of figure and marine subjects as well as compositions in fruit and flowers. He was elected an Associate of the Academy in 1834.

Transcribed from the 1888 RSA Annual Report