About this artwork

A fellow student of David Wilkie at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh, William Allan lived for some years in the Ukraine, making expeditions into Russia, Tartary (a vast region of eastern Europe and northern Asia) and Turkey. On his return to Britain in 1814, Allan specialised in painting Circassian (or Caucasian) subject pictures as a variant of romantic orientalism. Here, Nicholson has portrayed Allan as a Circassian archer. Allan made a lasting contribution to the development of Scottish painting through his illustrations of scenes from Sir Walter Scott's novels and subjects drawn from Scottish history.

Updated before 2020

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William Nicholson

William Nicholson