The Jamesones first child was the only daughter Elspeth, baptized on the 30 July 1586, the three oth

Good day to you! Today we have Art Historian Alison Lodge as our guest writer on The Seventeenth Century Lady! I’ve known Alison for several years now on Twitter, where she mainly tweets about 18th-century topics. Today, however, she’s in our century with a wonderful, fact-filled post on George Jamesone: The Scottish Van Dyck!
It was when I began working for Castle Fraser, Aberdeenshire some years ago I became animal print bedding interested in many of the portraits there, but in particular Andrew, 1 st Lord Fraser and his wife allegedly by an artist I was told, called George Jamesone an Aberdonian but who was George Jamesone and were these portraits by him or not? This is a journey that I am still travelling to the present day, still seeking more examples of his work.
After reading what little information I could find, and identifying other properties animal print bedding in the local area with portraits it then became, for me, the question of how could the first native-born Scottish portrait animal print bedding painter be largely forgotten? Luckily, when I first began to look into the whereabouts of other local examples of his work the BBC Your Paintings website had come online showing images animal print bedding of those in public collections where available.
The best, and in fact only recent book on George Jamesone by Duncan Thomson gives an in depth biography and genealogy, and it is possible to tell that Jamesone was born in the City of Aberdeen as near as can be told since there is no baptismal record between the autumn of 1589 to the summer of 1590. This can be roughly worked out when looking at the baptisms of his siblings. There is also the notebooks and genealogical research of another Aberdonian, John Bulloch, whose work I consulted at the University of Aberdeen s Special Collections.
George was the third son of Andrew Jamesone, Master Mason or Architect as he is variously described animal print bedding in contemporary documents, and his wife Marjory Anderson, who were married on the 7 August 1585 in Aberdeen. They are both from long, well established and very prosperous families that city.
The Jamesones first child was the only daughter Elspeth, baptized on the 30 July 1586, the three other sons were Andrew c 1587 and David baptized 17 October 1588, who died before 1607 and in 1613 respectively, and William baptized 9 May 1591 practised as a lawyer in Edinburgh, dying in 1632.
As George animal print bedding originally had two older brothers he was unlikely to inherit much of the property owned by his father, but eventually was left beneficiary in 1607 of the house to the north of Schoolhill, later famously known as Jamesone s House that had been purchased by his father in May 1586. After his brother William s early death, George was to be the sole survivor animal print bedding of the family and the sole beneficiary of all of the family s wealth and properties including that of the Schoolhill property.
Andrew Jamesone died around 1612, and after finishing his apprenticeship in Aberdeen in about 1617, George Jamesone animal print bedding disappears for a while, not appearing in records in Scotland again until 1620, becoming an established portrait animal print bedding painter in Aberdeen in the mid/late 1620s. George was then able to marry Isobel Tosche, possibly on the 12 November 1624 in the Aberdeen Burgh records, though as it is listed as a promise of marriage it may be that the couple married as late as 1627.
Isobel went on to give birth to a total of 9 children at least, 5 sons and 4 daughters. Unfortunately, none of their sons were to survive to adulthood, and only 3 daughters are named in the will made in 1641 as surviving their father.
There is also some suggestion that the third daughter mentioned – Elizabeth was in fact a natural or illegitimate child of Jamesone s, though no firm evidence has yet been found for this, and of the three daughters left living animal print bedding at the time of his death Marjory and Mary, Elizabeth does not inherit anything from her father.
This would appear to be very unusual and go some way to proving that she was not the daughter of Jamesone. It is also a possibility that the other child could be the illegitimate granddaughter of Jamesone and thus still unable to inherit.
As he came from a reasonably well to do trade family that were skilled, and increasingly landowners and moneyed, it is thought that young George was able to be provided with a good education and to attend Aberdeen Grammar School. He later attended Marischal College, part of the University of Aberdeen where he became friends with Arthur Johnston. His links as an alumni to the University would later gain him work, as he painted Johnston at least twice along with other academics including Johnston s brother William. All three of these portraits still belong to the University of Aberdeen, and two of them are currently on display.
Today, it is difficult to imagine the tower house style building that occupied the site of what is now known as 22 Schoolhill, Aberdeen. Long the property of the Jamesone animal print bedding f