Editing William Quiller Orchardson (section)

==Early years==

[[File:William Quiller Orchardson - The first cloud - Google Art Project.jpg|thumbnail|300px|William Quiller Orchardson – ''The First Cloud'']]
Orchardson was born in [[Edinburgh]], where his father was engaged in business. "Orchardson" is a variation of "Urquhartson", the name of a Highland [[sept (social)#Scottish septs|sept]] settled on [[Loch Ness]], from which the painter is descended.

At the age of fifteen, Orchardson was sent to Edinburgh's renowned art school, the [[Edinburgh College of Art|Trustees' Academy]], then under the mastership of [[Robert Scott Lauder]], where he had as fellow-students most of those who afterwards shed lustre on the Scottish school of the second half of the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Errington |first=Lindsay |date=1991 |title=Subversion in the sculpture gallery: An education experiment at the Trustees' Academy |url=https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/3/2/279/571849?login=false |journal=Journal of the History of Collections |volume=3 |issue=2|pages=279–291 |doi=10.1093/jhc/3.2.279 }}</ref> As a student, he was not especially precocious or industrious, but his work was distinguished by a peculiar reserve and an unusual determination that his hand should be subdued to his eye, with the result that his early works reach their own ideal as surely as those of his maturity.

By the time he was twenty, Orchardson had mastered the essentials of his art, and had produced at least one picture which might be accepted as representative, a portrait of sculptor [[John Hutchison (sculptor)|John Hutchison]]. 

For the next seven years he worked in Edinburgh, some of his attention being given to a "black and white" style, his practice in which having been partly acquired at a sketch club, which, in addition to Hutchison, included among its members [[Hugh Cameron (artist)|Hugh Cameron]], [[George Hay (artist)|George Hay]] and [[William McTaggart]].