About this artwork
Designing lighthouses ran in the Stevenson family. Thomas Stevenson, lighthouse engineer, was the youngest son of Robert Stevenson, who had designed the famous Bell Rock lighthouse. Thomas and his two brothers acted as consulting engineers to the lighthouse boards of India, New Zealand and Japan. His greatest achievement was the designing of a revolving light, an invention which won him an international reputation. His son, Robert Louis Stevenson, did not follow in the family engineering tradition, and became one of Scotland's most famous writers.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Sir George Reid (1841 - 1913) Scottish
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title:Thomas Stevenson, 1818 - 1887. Lighthouse and harbour engineer
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date created:After 1878
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materials:Oil on canvas
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measurements:86.30 x 63.50 cm; Framed: 107.60 x 84.60 x 10.80 cm / 16.00 kg
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object type:
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credit line:Bequeathed by Mrs Thomas Stevenson 1897
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accession number:PG 568
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depicted:
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subject:
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artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Sir George Reid
Sir George Reid
Reid was born in Aberdeen and worked first as a lithographer before moving to Edinburgh in 1862 to study at the Trustees' Academy. In 1866, supported by the Aberdeen collector, John Forbes White, he went to Holland to study under the landscape and genre painter, Gerrit Mollinger. He became a close...