David Roberts (painter) - Early Life

Early Life

David Roberts was born at Stockbridge, Edinburgh. At the age of 10, he was apprenticed by his father, a shoemaker, for seven years to a house painter and decorator named Gavin Beugo. During this time he studied art in the evenings. His first paid job came in 1815, when he moved to Perth for a year to work as a decorator.

In 1816, the Pantheon Theatre in Edinburgh took him on as a stage designer's assistant; this was the beginning of his career as a painter and designer of stage scenery. In 1819, he became the scene painter at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow. There Roberts met the Scottish actress Margaret McLachlan, said to be the illegitimate daughter of a Highland gypsy girl and a clan chief. They married in 1820, "for pure love". Although the marriage did not last long, it produced Roberts' only daughter, Christine, who was born 1821.

Although he was making a living from scene painting, it was around this time that Roberts began to produce oil paintings seriously. In 1820, he became friends with the artist William Clarkson Stanfield, then painting at the Pantheon in Edinburgh. In 1821, the Fine Arts Institution of Edinburgh accepted three of Roberts's paintings — views of Melrose and Dryburgh abbeys) — two of which sold. At Stanfield's suggestion, Roberts also sent three pictures to the 1822 Exhibition of Works by Living Artists, held in Edinburgh.