George Heriot (artist)

George Heriot (1759 – 22 July 1839) was a Scottish-Canadian civil servant, author and artist. He is most notable as a major figure in early Canadian art.

Heriot was born at Haddington in 1759, the eldest child of John Heriot, the sheriff clerk of the town, and his wife Marjory. The Heriots were part of the long-established family of the Heriots of Trabroun, the most well-known member of which was the seventeenth-century goldsmith and philanthropist George Heriot. He was educated at Duns and the Coldstream grammar school, before attending the Edinburgh Royal High School from 1769 to 1774, where he received a conventional classical education. After leaving the Royal High School he remained in Edinburgh, where he studied art under the encouragement of Sir James Grant.

In 1777 he travelled to London, apparently with the intention of beginning an artistic career, but instead found himself on a voyage to the West Indies. It is not known why he changed his plans, but his father's business had failed that year, causing his younger brother John to quit university and join the Army. He wrote and sketched extensively during his time in the Caribbean, and when he returned to London in 1781 he published A Descriptive Poem, written in the West Indies. On his return, he enrolled at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Here, he was taught landscape drawing, then considered an essential part of a military education, by Paul Sandby.

He had left the Academy by 1783, but remained in Woolwich, employed as a civilian clerk by the Army. In 1792, he was posted to Quebec, as a clerk in the ordnance office there.

He arrived in Canada in 1792, the beginning of a quarter-century association with the colony. In his first years, little is recorded; some surviving sketches indicate he travelled around Quebec and Montreal, and he published one sketch in the winter of 1792. In 1796, he returned to Britain, travelling along the south coast and in Wales before spending some months at the University of Edinburgh. After preparing some paintings for exhibition at the Royal Academy, he left for Canada.

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