William Fettes Douglas

His father was an amateur artist of some talent, and the son was encouraged to devote the free time of his ten years bank's service to painting and drawing.

Beyond a few months in the Trustees' Academy, then under Sir William Allan, he did not receive any systematic training, but he disciplined his hand and eye by the care and accuracy of the drawing he did by himself, and he attended the botany and anatomy classes of the university, while at a somewhat later date he painted a good deal in the country with the Faeds and Alexander Fraser, the landscape painter.

[2] In 1845, he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Scottish Academy, and soon his pictures attracted such notice that in 1851 he was elected an associate, and three years later a full member.

[2] As a collector he is said to have combined the specific knowledge of the connoisseur with the practical and general discernment of the artist ; but the only contributions he made to the literature of the subject were the notes in Mr. Gibson Craig's privately issued 'Facsimiles of old Bookbinding' (1882).

He also possessed a wide and accurate knowledge of pictorial art, which fitted him admirably for the curatorship of the National Gallery of Scotland, in which he succeeded James Drummond (1816–1877).

This office he held from 1877 to 1882, when he was elected to the presidential chair of the Royal Scottish Academy, vacant through the death of Sir Daniel Macnee.

It is reproduced in photogravure in the selection from his works published by the Royal Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts (1885), and edited by John Miller Gray.