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MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER
By JAMES ARCHER

MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER
By JAMES ARCHER, R.S.A. (1823-1904)
IN THE GUILDHALL ART GALLERY, LONDON

For many years the work of James Archer was extremely popular, though to-day it is hardly so well known as it deserves, public knowledge of his pictures being mainly limited to the present subject, to a couple of paintings in the Glasgow Art Gallery (a classical subject and a portrait of John Francis Ure), and to his diploma picture, " Rosalind and Celia," from Shakespeare's " As You Like It," which hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland at Edinburgh. He was the son of a dentist, and was born in Edinburgh, where he was educated at the High School. He studied art at the Trustees' Academy of that city, and when he was eighteen years of age he exhibited his first picture at the Royal Scottish Academy. From that time his paintings were an almost annual feature of the Scottish Academy until the time of his death.

First of all he turned his attention to portrait work executed in crayon, varied by subject pictures which attracted such attention that in 1850 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, becoming a full Academician eight years later. He removed to London in 1864, having in the meantime produced a large number of subject pictures dealing with historical and romantic subjects. After that time, however, he devoted himself largely to portrait work again, visiting America and India in the course of his profession. In the later years of his life, he took up his favourite style of painting once more, depicting scenes from the Bible. history, and ballad poetry.

" My Great Grandmother," therefore, is an example of the work by which he attained considerable fame, and from which, it is to be presumed, he derived his most lucrative commissions.

From the book "Famous Paintings" Volume 2 printed in 1913.

Large files of this public domain print are available at Stock Photos at Songs of Praise
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Online "Name the Painting"

Famous Paintings in this Series

James Archer My Great Grandmother	Bashkirtseff The Meeting	Bouguereau Charity	John Brett From the Dorsetshire Cliffs
Arnesby Brown The River Bank	Joseph Clark Mother's Darling	John Constable The Hay-Wain	Jean Baptiste Camille Corot The Fisherman's Hut
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot A Flood	Leonardo Da Vinci Monna Lisa	Edouard Detaille The Dream	Henri Fantin-Latour Flowers
Thomas Gainsborough Queen Charlotte	Thomas Gainsborough The Market Cart	Jean Baptiste Greuze The Head of a Girl	Jean Baptiste Greuze Fidelity
James Clark Hook Home With the Tide	Alfred William Hunt Windsor Castle	Josef Israels The Shipwrecked Mariner	B.W. Leader The Stream in Summer-time
Madame Vigee Le Brun Portrait of the Artist	Alphonse Legros A Canal With a Fisherman	Anton Mauve Watering Horses	J.L.E. Meissonier The Cavalier
Sir J.E. Millais Speak! Speak!	Sir J.E. Mallais My First Sermon	George Morland The Reckoning	George Morland The Inside of a Stable
Murillo The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin	Alfred Parsons When Nature Painted All Things Gay	Ralph Peacock The Sisters	Rembrandt Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild
Guido Reni "Ecce Homo"	Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mrs. Richard Hoare With Her Infant Son	Briton Riviere The Temptation in the Wilderness	Dante Gabriel Rossetti Day Dreams
John Singer Sargent Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth	Lady Stanley (Dorothy Tennant) His First Offence	Jan Steen Grace Before Meat	Marcus Stone On the Road from Waterloo to Paris
Constant Troyon Watering Cattle	H.S. Tuke "All Hands to the Pumps"	Velazquez King Philip IV. of Spain	S.E. Waller Sweethearts and Wives
Thomas Webster The Smile	Index Famous Paintings Volume 1 Art Gallery	Index Famous Paintings Volume 2 Art Gallery	Index Art Appreciation Lessons