William J. Thomson RSA (Self-Portrait)
Elected RSA: 7 October 1829
William J. Thomson RSA was born in 1771 in Savannah, Georgia, North America.
His father Alexander Thomson, a government official and a Royalist, returned to his native place, Edinburgh, on the breaking out of the American War.
Young Thomson was partly educated in London, practised portrait painting there for some years; but about 1812 he settled in Edinburgh, where he soon acquired an excellent practice as a portrait painter, principally in miniature, although in the latter part of his life her occasionally painted in oil.
He died in 1845.
RSA Obituary, transcribed from the 1845 RSA Annual Report
