John Burnet (painter)

Son of the Surveyor-General of Excise of Scotland, Burnet was born either in Edinburgh in 1781 or in Fisherrow in 1784.

He was apprenticed to the engraver Robert Scott and later trained at the Trustees Academy.

[1] In 1806, he moved from Edinburgh to London, where he became an established painter of portraits, landscapes, and rural genre scenes.

[1] As an engraver he provided illustrations for editions of Robert Burns’s poems and Walter Scott’s Waverley novels.

He also wrote manuals and books on drawing, painting and artists, retiring from public life in 1860.

William Simson , John Burnet , 1841, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery , London