Robert Ker Porter

Sir Robert Ker Porter, KCH (1777–1842) was a Scottish artist, author, diplomat and traveller. Known today for his accounts of his travels in Spain, Portugal and Russia, he was one of the earliest panorama painters in Britain, was appointed historical painter to Tsar Alexander I of Russia and served as British consul in Venezuela.

Porter was born in Durham in 1777, one of the five children of William Porter, an army surgeon. His sisters were the writers Jane Porter and Anna Maria Porter. His father died in 1779, and the following year his mother took him to Edinburgh, where he spent much of his early life. He decided that he wanted to become a painter of battle scenes, and in 1790 his mother took him to see Benjamin West, who thought enough of his sketches to procure him admission as a student at the Royal Academy. In 1792 he received a silver palette from the Society of Arts for a drawing entitled The Witch of Endor. In 1793 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Shoreditch church; in 1794 he painted Christ allaying the Storm for the Roman Catholic chapel at Portsea, Portsmouth; and in 1798 St. John Preaching for St John's College, Cambridge.

In 1800 he obtained work as a scene-painter at the Lyceum Theatre, and in the same year caused a sensation when his Storming of Seringapatam, a panorama 120 feet (37 m) long, carried round three-quarters of a circle, was exhibited at the Lyceum. It was painted, according to his sister Jane, in six weeks. Other successful works in the same format were the Battle of Lodi (1803), also exhibited at the Lyceum, and the Defeat of the French at the Devil's Bridge, Mont St. Gothard, by Suwarrow in 1804. He also showed several pictures at the Royal Academy including Death of Sir Philip Sydney in 1792, The Defeat of King Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln in 1793, and the Battle of Northampton in 1796.

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