Identity:

John Macallan Swan was a painter and sculptor.

Life:

Swan is best remembered as an animal painter and sculptor although he also painted landscape and figure subjects. He studied at the Lambeth School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools and later in Paris with Jean-Leon Gérôme and Emmanuel Frémiet (1824-1910). Swan exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1878 and was elected RA in 1905. He also exhibited at other London venues including the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery and enjoyed success abroad, winning medals at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889 and 1900, Munich in 1897 and at the Chicago World Fair in 1893.

Bibliography:

Wood, Christopher, Victorian Painters, 2 vols., 3rd ed., revised, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995; The Annual Register, London, 1910, p. 113; Walkley, Giles, Artists' houses in London 1764-1914, Aldershot, 1994;.