J. Fleming,
circa 18
‘Scottish Seascape’
Plaque on fra
Oil on wo
14¾ x 20
John Fleming (1792-1845) was a Scottish landscape painter who lived and worked in Greenock. He is best known for the series of views he painted for Swan’s Lakes of Scotland, published at Glasgow in 1834. Fleming was born in about 1792, and apprenticed to a housepainter at the age of fourteen. He is thought to have had some contact with the portrait painter James Saxon before spending some time in London, where he worked as a housepainter and took the opportunity to the study paintings in galleries there.
As a landscapist, Fleming specialized in small paintings of Scottish scenery, which became widely known through a series of collaborations with the Glasgow engraver and publisher Joseph Swan. He first worked with Swan in 1828 on a publication entitled Select Views of Glasgow and its environs, to which the Glasgow artist John Knox also contributed. Fleming and Swan followed this with Select Views on the Clyde (1830) and Select Views of the Lakes of Scotland (1834). The last of these, consisting of a total of 48 plates, issued in 16 parts, proved popular enough to justify the publication of further editions in 1836 and 1839.
