Steven, John, RSA
1792 – 1868
Original founding member of the Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, being elected Associate in 1826 and full Academician in 1829. He died following a railway accident in France. His Obituary Notice appeared in the RSA Annual Report for 1868, Notice XI; "Mr John Stevens, a native of Ayr, and one of the earliest Members of the Academy, after a long and blameless life devoted to his art, and during which he enjoyed the friendship of some of the most eminent of its professors - particularly in Rome, where he passed the greater portion of his time, died at Edinburgh on the 1st of June [sic]. For several years he had experienced the advancing infirmities of old age; but his end was hastened by the shock his system received from a railway accident in France. The most important of his exhibited works at this Academy, was perhaps that representing 'Pilgrims at their Devotions in an Italian Convent,' painted at Rome, and exhibited in 1831."
