Scott, David (1806-1849) and William Bell(1811-1890)

These two brothers displayed unusual talent in the treatment of supernatural themes in art. David Scott was born October 10 (or 12), 1806, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and lived a comparatively uneventful life, his remarkable gifts being largely unrecognized by his contemporaries. He died on March 5, 1849.

In modern times, however, connoisseurs have appreciated his paintings, perceiving in his work great technical merits. In addition, people who care for art dealing with the supernatural have noted that Scott's Paracelsus and Vasco de Gama are in the forefront of work of this kind. His beautiful drawings for The Ancient Mariner express the very spirit of Coleridge, the archmystic, rendering it with a skill unsurpassed in any previous or subsequent illustrations to this poem.

David's brother, William Bell Scott, was also born in Edinburgh, his birth date being September 12, 1811. His career was very different from David's, for he won worldly success from the outset, and before his death on November 22, 1890, he had received much acclaim.

Etching some of his brother's works, and painting a host of pictures, he was also a voluminous writer, and his Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott (2 vols., published posthumously, 1892) contains insights concerning the mystic symbolism permeating the painting of the Middle Ages. It also contains a shrewd and interesting account of D. G. Rossetti's essays on table-turning and other Spiritualist practices.

William Bell's poems are almost all of a metaphysical order, and although it is extravagant to call him "the Scottish Blake," as many people have done, his mystical verse undoubtedly reflects a certain "meditative beauty," as "Fiona Macleod" (William Sharp ) once wrote on the subject.