People - David Roberts

David Roberts - Artist - 1796 - 1864

David Roberts (1796 - 1864) was a Scottish painter. He is especially known for a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of the Near East that he produced from sketches he made during long tours of the region from 1838 to 1840.

Earlier in 1832 he travelled in Spain, mainly Andalucia including Granada, Seville and Tangiers and was one of the most famous of many painters over the ages to have captured the castles including Gaucin's Castillo de Aguilar and the surrounding countryside including the Rock of Gibraltar and the Straits of Gibraltar, and the north African mountains across the sea.

He returned to Britain at the end of 1833 with a supply of sketches that he elaborated into attractive and popular paintings.

The British Institution exhibited his "Interior of Seville Cathedral" in 1834. He made a fine series of Spanish illustrations for the Landscape Annual of 1836. Then in 1837 a selection of his Picturesque Sketches in Spain was reproduced by lithography.

These and his large oil paintings of similar subjects made him a prominent Orientalist painter.

He was elected as a Royal Academician in 1841.