Allan Ramsay is now regarded as one of the most significant British School painters. He was London's top portrait painter for over 30 years, known for his refined use of colour and the beauty, elegance, sensitivity, and charm of his work. This handsome young officer’s identity to this day is unknown.

Allan Ramsay, 1713-1784

Ramsay is now recognised as one of the most important painters of the British School. For over thirty years he was the leading portrait painter working in London, noted for his refined use of colour and the beauty, elegance, an charm of his work. He was appinted Principal Painter in Ordinary to George III, executing many royal commissions. He influenced many artists, including some of the great names, such as Gainsborough and Reynolds, and was also an important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Classical scholar, linguist, man of letters, he numbered among his friends David Hume, Adam Smith, Horace Walpole and Samuel Johnson. He knew Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, painting the latter's portrait. 

Ramsay was born in Edinburgh, the eldest child of the poet Allen Ramsay, and educated at the High School. He had a gift for drawing, executing a remarkable portrait of his father in chalk when he was only fifteen. At sixteen he enrolled as an artist-member at the newly founded but short-lived Academy of St. Luke in Edinburgh, attending drawing classes for two or three years. After a short period in london as a pupil of the Swedish portrait painter Hans Hysing, Ramsay practised as a portrait painter in Edinburgh. In 1736 he made the first of four extended visits to Italy, working in the studios of a number of Italian painters. On his return in 1738 he set himself up as a portrait painter in London. He never looked back. By December that year the general opinion in London was that, with the exception of an Italian, Ramsay was trhe finest portrait painter in the country. He adopted a fundamental change in style in 1753, when he took a new 'natural' approach to portraiture, combining powerful characterization with an elegance and delicacy reminiscent of contemporary French painting. He continued as the leading portrait painter in Britain, based in London but frequently visiting Scotland, until 1773, when he suffered a permanent injury to his right arm in a fall from a ladder. His glittering career as a painter was effectively over. However, he was able to devote more time to his scholarly pursuits. In addition to visiting Italy in 1754-57, he was there in 1775-77 and 1782-84, spending much of both later stays on the preparation of a treatise on the site of Horace's Sabine villa. The Scottish artist Jacob More was engaged by Ramsay to execute landscape drawings for engraving, but the treatise was never published.