13 Facts About Arthur Melville

Arthur Melville was a Scottish painter of Orientalist subjects, among others.

Arthur Melville was born in Loanhead-of-Guthrie, Forfarshire on 10 April 1855.

Arthur Melville took up painting while working as a grocer's apprentice and he attended evening art classes in Edinburgh - his biographer indicated that he often walked the eight miles there and back.

Arthur Melville became a fulltime student at the Royal Scottish Academy School under John Campbell Noble.

Arthur Melville had met a Scottish artist, Robert Weir Allan, who had introduced him to the Impressionists.

Arthur Melville then spent the summer of 1879 in Grez-sur-Loing.

Arthur Melville seemed keen to find peasant models who would pose en plein air following in the footsteps of the work of French rural Naturalists.

Arthur Melville returned to Edinburgh early in the summer of 1880 and he took a studio in Shandwick Place which he shared with his brother George, a medical student.

Arthur Melville only stayed a few months as he intended to return to France and then to travel to the Middle East.

The colour-sense which is so notable a feature of Arthur Melville's work developed during his travels in Persia, Egypt and Turkey between 1880 and 1882, where he sometimes travelled alone on long inland journeys.

Arthur Melville was at his best in his watercolours of Eastern life and colour and his Venetian scenes, but he painted several striking portraits in oils and a powerful composition of The Return from the Crucifixion which remained unfinished at his death in 1904.

Arthur Melville died on August 28th, 1904 and his ashes were buried at his former home.

Arthur Melville's gravesite is marked with a memorial stone which was restored in 2023 by the Brookwood Cemetery Society.