He went on the Grand Tour to Italy, where he was in Rome in 1758/9 where he lived on the Strada della Croce and was involved in the expatriate artist community.
He assisted in winding up the affairs of the young painter Jonathan Skelton who died while there.
He spent a decade in India (1776–1785) where he had a good portrait practice, but returned to Scotland where he was last recorded in Edinburgh in 1806.
In April 2008, the British Department for Culture, Media and Sport placed a temporary export bar on ‘a rare likeness of Alexander Dalrymple', by John Thomas Seton.
[1] Dalrymple was the first Hydrographer to the Admiralty, who ‘through his pioneering work on nautical charts, is a pivotal figure in the development of the global maritime industry as well as of the British Empire’.