Biography

Like many of his Scottish contemporaries, Archer studied at the Trustees’ Academy which had been founded in Edinburgh in 1760 as the earliest publicly funded art school in Britain. By the late 1840s he was specialising in themes from medieval history and literature, eventually extending his repertoire to include Arthurian subjects in emulation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1862 he made a career move to London where he renewed his original interest in portraiture and became one of the first Victorian painters to execute children’s portraits in period costume. Archer was unusually well travelled for a portrait and narrative painter, visiting the United States in 1884 and India in 1886 for a three year period.