Robert Foulis (printer)

After spending 1738 and 1739 in England and France in company with his brother Andrew, who had been intended for the church and had received a better education, Robert set up a publishing business in 1741 in Glasgow, and in 1742 acquired his own press.

They spared no pains, and Robert went to France to procure manuscripts of the classics, and to engage a skilled engraver and a copper-plate printer.

Famous as well, the 12mo edition of Horace was long, but erroneously, believed to be immaculate: though the successive sheets were posted in the university and a reward offered for the discovery of any inaccuracy, six errors at least, according to Thomas Frognall Dibdin, escaped detection; three of those were found by Duke Gordon.

Though one of their chief patrons, the earl of Northumberland, warned them to "print for posterity and prosper," they spent their money in collecting pictures, pieces of sculpture and models, in paying for the education and traveling of youthful artists, and in copying the masterpieces of foreign art.

In the teachers it attracted from France and Italy and the collection of paintings it made available to students it brought a new sophistication to art-training in Scotland.