“ He was educated for the bar, but at the age of twenty-four he began at Edinburgh systematically to study the practice of art. On completing a course of instruction he removed to London, and as early as 1843 exhibited at the Royal Academy. At the beginning of his career he utilized his sporting experiences by painting groups of huntsmen, horses and hounds, such as the “Meet of H.M. Staghounds” and the “Melton Hunt”; but his position in society gradually made him a fashionable portrait-painter. ”