St. James's Square, Edinburgh. Among the first students admitted were David Wilkie and William Allan, afterwards P.R.S.A. On 5 March 1800 the entire Trustees' Academy, including its decorative and ornamental department, was placed under Graham's charge, and he held the appointment till his death on 1 Nov. 1817. In 1812 he contributed a scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and a subject from Ovid to the fifth annual exhibition of the Associated Artists, Edinburgh.
His works are correct, in good taste, and broadly handled, and they evince considerable power; but his portraits—of which ‘Miss Wallis as Juliet’ and ‘Master Murray’ were mezzotinted by J. Grozer and P. Dawe—are less excellent than his figure pictures. He is known as an animal painter by a series of studies of lions and tigers, painted in the menagerie of the Tower. As a teacher he was eminently successful; he introduced various improvements into the system of training, and succeeded in inspiring his pupils with his own enthusiasm for art. Among those who studied under him, in addition to the names mentioned above, were James and John Burnet [q. v.], Alexander Fraser (1786–1865) [q. v.], and Sir John Watson-Gordon [q. v.] Wilkie retained the greatest respect for his memory, and the print from his old master's ‘Burial of General Fraser’ always hung in his study. Cunningham describes him as ‘a kind and ardent-minded man, of native understanding and joyous and sarcastic humour.’ His ‘Murder of Rizzio’ was mezzotinted by Dickinson; his ‘David instructing Solomon,’ 1797, was acquired by the Earl of Wemyss; the ‘Disobedient Prophet’ is in the National Gallery of Scotland; and the ‘Portrait of Alderman Boydell’ and the ‘Escape of Queen Mary from Lochleven’ were presented by Boydell to the Stationers' Hall, London, and are still preserved there.
[Scots Mag. 1817, vol. lxxx.; Minute-book of Board of Manufactures, Edinburgh; Manuscript History of the Trustees' Academy, by A. Christie, A.R.S.A.; Cunningham's Life of Wilkie; J. Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotint Portraits; Catalogues of National Gallery of Scotland, Royal Academy, and Exhibitions of Associated Artists, Edinburgh.]
GRAHAM, JOHN (1805–1839), botanist, was a native of Dumfriesshire, who went to India in 1826. Shortly after his arrival in that country he was appointed by his patron, the governor (Sir John Malcolm), deputy postmaster-general of the Bombay presidency, which post he held until his death. He was also made superintendent of the botanic garden at Bombay soon after its establishment, and occupied himself in enriching it with exotic and indigenous plants, the latter mostly of his own collecting. At the time of his death he was engaged in printing a catalogue of Bombay plants, of which he saw two hundred pages through the press, and it was finished by his friend Mr. J. Nimmo. He died at Khandalla on 28 May 1839, after a few days' illness.
[Pref. Bombay Flora, p. 4.]
GRAHAM, JOHN (1776–1844), historian, born in 1776 in co. Fermanagh, Ireland, was grandson of Lieutenant James Graham of Clones, and great-grandson of James Graham of Mullinahinch, who was a cornet at the defence of Enniskillen in 1689. The family was transplanted to Ulster from Cumberland in the early part of the seventeenth century. He graduated B.A. in 1798 and M.A. in 1815 at Trinity College, Dublin, was ordained in the established church of Ireland, and obtained the curacy of Lifford, co. Donegal. He had witnessed the celebration of the centenary of the siege of Londonderry in 1788, and had been brought up in admiration of its heroes. In 1819 he published, by the aid of Lord Kenyon, in London, ‘Annals of Ireland, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Military,’ an account compiled from numerous authorities of the wars in Ireland, which began in October 1641. In 1823 he published at Londonderry ‘Derriana,’ consisting of a history of the siege of Londonderry and defence of Enniskillen in 1688 and 1689, with historical poetry and biographical notes. It is a clear and interesting account of the siege, based on the journals of the defenders and other contemporary records. One of the poems, ‘The Shutting of the Gates,’ is a spirited ballad of six stanzas, which attained widespread popularity in the district, and may still be heard in farmhouses between the Foyle and the Ban, where these lines are felt—
Cold are the hands that closed that gate
Against the wily foe,
But here to time's remotest date
Their spirit still shall glow.
A second edition of the book, without the poems, was published in Dublin in 1829, and the poems were printed separately in the same year. In April 1824 Graham obtained the rectory of Tamlaght-ard, commonly called Magilligan, on the coast of county Derry, and here he resided till his death, 6 March 1844. In 1839 he published in Dublin ‘A History of Ireland from the Relief of Londonderry in 1689 to the Siege of Limerick in 1691,’ a book much read in the north of
