Details

Name

David Young Cameron

Brief Biography

1865 - 1945, Scottish

Occupation

Artist

Description

The son of a Glasgow minister, D Y cameron embarked on a mercantile career on leaving school, but in the evening attended classes at Glasgow School of Art. At the age of twenty he went to Edinburgh College of Art and in 1887, encouraged by George Stevenson, an amateur etcher and friend of Seymour Haden, he took up etching.

In Cameron's early work, which includes the Paisley Set (1888) and the Clyde Set (1889) Scottish subjects are dominent except for a few Thames scenes, which show an indebtedness to Whistler. This Whistlerian infulence is also apparent in his North Italian Set of 1896, particularly in the images of Venice. Cameron was to travel throughout Eurpoe, and to Egypt. During the war he worked as a war artist for the Canadian Government.

By 1905 Cameron was making drypoint additions to his etchings in order to achieve greater depth in the shadows, and gradually drypoint took over, culminating in the Scottish landscapes with their significant contrasts of light and shade. From 1911 these formed almost the whole of his output, exploiting a formula of subdued foreground, dark middle areas, and lightly delineated backgrounds. D Y Cameron was elected A.R.A in 1911, and became a full academician in 1920.