Scottish painter. His love of the sea began in his childhood, spent on the west coast of Scotland. An aptitude for portraitGLOSSARYThe Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello. The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90). painting led him to Edinburgh in 1852 where he became one of a brilliant generation of students under Robert Scott Lauder at the Trustees' Academy. In 1857 he visited the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, seeing paintings by the Old Masters and by Constable and Turner, for both of whom he had a lifelong admiration. His naturalistic style was influenced by the English Pre-RaphaelitesGLOSSARYA group of English artists, among them Holman Hunt, Millais and Rossetti, who in 1848 formed the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, aiming to produce work in the spirit which imbued Italian artists before Raphael's move to Rome. The movement was a mixture of romantic medievalism and the desire to return to a realistic depiction of nature, disregarding what they considered to be the arbitrary rules of academic art. These preoccupations were unified by a kind of seriousness which turned painting into a moral as well as an aesthetic act. The group also had an impact on the decorative arts through painted furniture, tapestries, stained glass and designs for fabric and wallpaper. whom he met in Manchester.
He published two plays, "The Wreck of the Hesperus" in 1861 and "Dora" in 1868. In 1870 he was made a member of the Royal Scottish Academy and exhibited there regularly until 1895. He made only three short trips to the Continent. His highly expressive coastal landscapes, which capture moods and dissolve forms to the point of abstraction, reveal his acquaintance with contemporary painting on the continent. He never really became known outside his native Scotland.
His grandson, William MacTaggart the Younger (1903-1981) was also a painter.
