Portrait of a gentleman, traditionally identified as George Hay, 7th Marquess of Tweeddale, with his horse and two dogs, in an extensive landscape.

George Hay, 7th Marquess of Tweeddale DL (1753-1804) was a Scottish peer and naval officer. He was a great-grandson of John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale and the former Lady Mary Maitland (a daughter of John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale). In 1785, he married Lady Hannah Maitland, a daughter of James Maitland, 7th Earl of Lauderdale and Mary Turner Lombe. Together, George and Hannah were the parents of eleven children. 

Alexander Nasmyth, 1758-1840

Sir David Wilkie described Nasmyth in a posthumous tribute as "the founder of the Landscape Painting School of Scotland". A man of many accomplishments, including engineering and architectural design, and a great friend of Robert Burns, Nasmyth was one of the leading figures in Edinburgh's cultural renaissance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His house was a meeting place for men of virtually every branch of intellectual pursuit. An excellent teacher, he offered landscape classes for amateur and professional artists from his home in York Place, which were later taken over by his daughter Jane. Some of his other children also became landscape painters, notably Patrick and Charlotte.
Nasmyth was born in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, the son of a prominent architect-builder. While apprenticed to a house painter and decorator he attended art classes at the Trustees' Academy under Alexander Runciman. There he came to the notice of the Scottish portrait painter Allen Ramsay, who persuaded him to move to London as an assistant. Nasmyth worked in Ramsay's studio, where he was introduced to Italian art, for four years. After a further period in Edinburgh, working as a portrait painter, Nasmyth was financed by one of his patrons to spend two years in Italy. On his return to Edinburgh he took up landscape painting, evolving an influential style - large-scale panoramic views of Scottish country houses and castles in which "topographical accuracy was united with a distinctive picturesque sensibility".