Roberts, DAVID

Roberts, DAVID, landscape and architectural painter, was born at Edinburgh (in Stockbridge) on 24th October 1796, and was apprenticed to a house-painter. In 1818 he advanced to the grade of scene-painter, and in 1821 went to London to paint scenery for the stage of Drury Lane. All this while he was studying artistic drawing and painting, and in 1826 and 1827 he attracted the attention of the public with pictures of Rouen and Amiens cathedrals in the Royal Academy exhibitions. Then for several years he travelled in Spain, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Italy, Belgium, making drawings of grand and impressive buildings and landscapes with picturesque edifices, and working them up into pictures. From among this work the following stand out—the drawings from Spain for the illustrations to the Landscape Annual (1835–38); the magnificent volumes of The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia (1842); numerous interiors of churches, as St Miguel at Xeres, Holy Nativity at Bethlehem, St Jean at Caen, St Paul at Antwerp, St Peter's at Rome, the cathedrals of Milan and Seville; and the grandiose pictures, 'Departure of the Israelites from Egypt' (1829), 'Ruins of the Great Temple at Carnac' (1845), 'Jerusalem from the South-east' (1845), 'Destruction of Jerusalem' (1849), 'Rome' (1855), and 'Grand Canal at Venice' (1856). Roberts' style is essentially spectacular, producing grand broad effects, with magnificent architectural arrangements, to which the details are of course generally sacrificed. He was elected an A.R.A. in 1839, an R.A. in 1841; and died 25th November 1864. See Life by James Ballantine (1866).