The landscape painter Hugh William Williams was born in Devon, but had moved to Scotland by the age of seventeen and spent most of the rest of his career based there. He probably began working as a draughtsman in Dalkeith for an Italian maker of embroidered muslin, before trying to establish himself as a watercolour artist in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London. However, it was in 1816-18 while accompanying the Grand Tour of his friend and patron, William Douglas of Orchardton, that he found his true artistic identity. Their journey was unusually wide­ ranging, and included Greece and the Ionian Islands, Malta and Sicily, in addition to the usual tour of Italy. He published an illustrated account of his Travels in Italy, Greece and the Ionian Islands in 1820, and started to produce landscape views of Greece. These remained his main preoccupation and earned him the nickname 'Grecian Williams'.