Biography

In 1801 Fraser was admitted to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh as a student of the history painter John Graham, and was a contemporary of David Wilkie and William Allan. Having made his public exhibition debut with the Associated Artists of Edinburgh in 1809, Fraser launched himself as a genre painter at the Royal Academy in 1810, undoubtedly encouraged by Wilkie’s dramatic rise to prominence at the same venue from 1806. In 1813 Fraser joined Wilkie in London where he acted as his assistant for some twenty years and undertook commissions for genre and still-life which his compatriot was unable to accommodate. As an independent genre painter, his popular success was reflected in the patronage of several leading collectors of modern British art.