To lift the veil enshrouding the past and, though but dimly, recall its artists’ lives and works may appeal to a few only. The secrets of the great are already known; their deeds, as modern times desire, will be more rapidly found tabulated in any biographical dictionary; those whom chance and fate have less favoured will serve no other purpose than that of a poor remembrance. Nevertheless to separate those who followed the ways of art in other than water-colour landscape painting, I must recall some at least whose influence of mind and work aided to attain in Scotland the important position it commands to-day. Amongst the first connected with landscape painting the names of John and Robert Norie cannot fairly be omitted. Carrying on a business in Edinburgh at the beginning of the eighteenth century as house painters and decorators, it was in their decorative schemes that landscape played the most significant part, a form of decoration of considerable fashion in the Scottish capital at that time, and applied in various ways to doors, panels, mantelpieces, etc., of private houses; and apart from their business, both father and sons painted some landscapes of no mean order. It was in their workshops, too, that some afterwards notable artists, in their early life, served as apprentices, famous amongst them being Alexander Runciman (1736-1785), John Wilson (1774-1855), and James Howe (1780-1836). Landscape painting, however, apart from such as was utilized in decorative schemes, had little or no public appreciators. Portraits and deeds of tragedy and valour seemed to occupy the artists’ minds; yet, like the curlew’s haunting note on loch and mountain side, there was an influence astir towards more peaceful scenes, a call that knew no limited geography, no definite law. In Ayrshire, Robert Burns (1759-1796) was weaving his nature songs; while Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840), in Midlothian, was preparing his palette to capture similar themes in paint. But perhaps the greatest impetus given to a wider public appreciation of the scenery of his own country was the publication in 1810 of Sir Walter Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” followed in 1814 by his more distinguished “Waverley Novels.” Yet previous to that universal awakening, in 1793 Alexander Nasmyth resigned his portrait and figure work for that of landscape, and it is from that period that this branch of painting in oils most vigorously commenced; while apart from the use of water-colour by topographical artists, perhaps the first few landscapes of importance were of a slightly earlier date, by the renowned architect Robert Adam (1728-1792). Not, however, until the time of Hugh William Williams (1773-1829) did the art become more pictorially practised. As Nasmyth has been credited with being the father of Scottish landscape painting in oils, Hugh William Williams might be more universally noted as, if not the father, at least one of the principal pioneers of landscape painting in water-colours.