Samuel Bough

Samuel Bough ( born January 8, 1822 in Carlisle, † November 19, 1878 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish landscape painter.

Life

Bough was born as the third child of a shoemaker originally from Somersetshire. In his early youth he worked in his father's workshop; later he worked for a short time in the city clerk from Carlisle office. Very quickly, however, he gave up the prospect of a legal career and went on tour to capture sceneries in watercolors, which he also had contacts with Gypsies. Several times he lived in that time in London. The first time, in 1838, he visited the National Gallery and made there some copies; Bough never went to an art school. In 1845 he was hired as a scene painter in Manchester and later in Glasgow, where he married Isabella Taylor, a singer at the theater.

Boughs skills impressed the Scottish portrait painter Sir Daniel Macnee so effectively that he advised him to abandon his job and work as a professional landscape painter. So Bough began in 1849 with serious studies of nature in neighboring Cadzo Forest and in Port Glasgow, where he created his Shipbuilding at Dumbarton. In addition he painted coastal views, moonlight and Highland scenery, and at exhibitions he showed sometimes images that were created on extensive travels throughout the UK and across the Channel.

Work

His main works include: Canty Bay, The Rocket Cart, St. Monan 's, London from Shooter's Hill, Kirkwall, Borrowdale ( printed in the Art Journal, 1871), March of the Avenging Army, Bannockburn and the Carse of Stirling and Guildford Bridge. He also illustrated books for Blackie & Co. and other publishers, produced a couple of not very profitable etchings, created several panoramas, and gave it the painting of stage scenery never completely.

In 1856 Bough was an associate and in 1875 finally a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy. He was also Vice- President of the Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, although it may have been many contemporaries rather than bohemian remembered. In the last 20 years up to his death, he was domiciled in Edinburgh.