Explore: Archibald Rutherford

(1743 - 1779)

Landscape painter Archibald Rutherford was born in Jedburgh, in the Scottish Borders. In c.1762 he was appointed the Drawing Master at Perth Academy. Rutherford was simultaneously the Perth based agent for a fabric printing business, George Swan and Sons. However, by 1776 he had moved to Edinburgh and that year he announced, in the ‘Caledonian Mercury’ newspaper, his intention to open ‘a public school, at his house… for teaching the Elements of Perspective drawing… and the orders of architecture and fortification.’ The school failed to materialise and instead the Board of Manufacturers reportedly encouraged him to live and teach in Glasgow. After Rutherford’s premature death, a sale of his drawings was held in Edinburgh, in 1779.