Francis Grant (artist)

Sir Francis Grant PRA (18 January 1803 – 5 October 1878) was a Scottish portrait painter who painted Queen Victoria and many distinguished British aristocratic and political figures. He served as President of the Royal Academy.

Grant was the fourth son of Francis Grant, Laird of Kilgraston, near Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, and his wife Anne Oliphant of Rossie. Grant was educated at Harrow School and inherited a large sum of money on the death of his father in 1818 – a fortune which was apparently "soon spent". He had a passion for fox-hunting and other sports and initially intended to become a lawyer. However, he left his studies to take up painting, of which he was mainly self-taught – partly by copying the works of Velasquez and other masters – though he briefly spent time in the studio of Alexander Nasmyth.

He acquired a reputation as a fine painter of "sporting" subjects, and in 1834 exhibited at the Royal Academy – a picture called Melton Breakfast (which was engraved by Charles G. Lewis). In 1837 he exhibited The Meeting of His Majesty's Staghounds on Ascot Heath, painted for the Earl of Chesterfield, and in 1839 The Melton Hunt, purchased by the Duke of Wellington (both of these have been engraved, the former by F. Bromley, the latter by W. Humphreys).In 1841, he painted A Shooting Party at Rawton Abbey for the Earl of Lichfield, and in 1848 The Cottesmore Hunt for Sir Richard Sutton. In 1840 Grant exhibited an equestrian group of Queen Victoria riding with Lord Melbourne and others in Windsor Park, and at once became the fashionable portrait-painter of the day. His portrait of Lady Glenlyon, exhibited in 1842, increased his reputation, and for nearly forty years the most graceful and refined portraits in the Royal Academy exhibitions came from his studio.

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