George Harvey

Sir George Frederick Harvey (1 February 1806 – 22 January 1876), Scottish painter. Early life He was the son of George Harvey, a watchmaker, and Elizabeth (née Jeffrey) Harvey, and was born at 59 Main Street, St Ninians, a small village near Stirling. His brother was Bailie Harvey was long active in Glasgow municipal affairs. Soon after his birth his parents removed to Stirling, where George was apprenticed to Mr McLaren, a bookseller on Bow Street. His love for art having, however, become very decided, in his eighteenth year he entered the Trustees' Academy on Picardy Place in Edinburgh. Here he so distinguished himself that in 1826 he was invited by the Scottish artists, who had resolved to found a Scottish Academy, to join it as an associate (see Royal Scottish Academy). Career Harvey's first picture, "A Village School," was exhibited in 1826 at the Edinburgh Institution; and from the time of the opening of the Academy in the following year he continued annually to exhibit. His best-known pictures are those depicting historical episodes in religious history from a puritan or evangelical point of view, such as "Covenanters' Preaching," "Covenanters' Communion," "John Bunyan and his Blind Daughter," "Sabbath Evening," and the "Quitting of the Manse."