Of his four sons Andrew (1815–1845) is separately noticed.
[Brown's Memoirs of Ebenezer Picken, Poet, and Andrew Picken, Novelist, with portraits; Gent. Mag. 1834, i. 111; Irving's Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen.]
PICKEN, ANDREW (1815–1845), draughtsman and lithographer, second of the four sons of Andrew Picken (1788–1833) [q. v.] the novelist, was born in 1815. He became a pupil of Louis Haghe, and in 1835 received from the Society of Arts their silver Isis medal for a lithographic drawing of the ruins of the Houses of Parliament after the fire. In the same year he exhibited, at the Royal Academy, a view of a tomb in Narbonne Cathedral. Picken then established himself as a lithographer, and had already earned a reputation by the excellent quality of his work when in 1837 his health, which had always been delicate, broke down, and, his lungs being affected, he was sent to Madeira. During a residence there of two years he drew a series of views of the island, which, on his return to England, were published under the title ‘Madeira Illustrated,’ 1840, with interesting letterpress edited from his notes by Dr. James Macaulay. To this fine work, which is now scarce, was due much of the subsequent popularity of Madeira as a health resort. After a short interval Picken found it necessary to revisit Madeira; but his disease making rapid progress, he came back to London, and died there on 24 June 1845. During his brief career Picken executed on stone a large number of landscapes, chiefly illustrations to books of travel and private commissions. His youngest brother, Thomas, was also a landscape lithographer, and did much good work for Roberts's ‘Holy Land,’ 1855; Payne's ‘English Lake Scenery,’ 1856; ‘Scotland Delineated,’ and other works. In 1879 he became an inmate of the Charterhouse, London.
[Art Union, 1845, p. 263; Memoir of E. and A. Picken, by R. Brown, 1879 (Paisley Burns Club publications).]
PICKEN, EBENEZER (1769–1816), minor poet, son of a silk weaver, was born in Paisley in 1769. Receiving his elementary education in Paisley, he went in 1785 to Glasgow University, studying there for five years. Preferring literature and good-fellowship to the prospects of a united secession minister—the office which his father desired him to fill—Picken produced poetry while a student. Alexander Wilson, poet and naturalist, warmly hailed his gift in a poetical epistle (Wilson, Poems, 1790). On 14 April 1791 Picken and Wilson competed for the prize offered by the debating society in the Edinburgh Pantheon for the best essay on the theme, ‘Whether have the exertions of Allan Ramsay or Robert Fergusson done more honour to Scottish poetry?’ In blank verse Picken eulogised Ramsay, Wilson upholding Fergusson. Neither won the prize, but they published their poems in a pamphlet, ‘The Laurel disputed; or the Merits of Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson contrasted,’ each contributing an additional poem to the brochure.
In 1791 Picken opened a school at Falkirk, and married the daughter of the minister of the burgher church there, named Belfrage. Towards the end of the year he was appointed teacher of an endowed school at Carron, Stirlingshire, where he remained about five years, struggling with poverty, but assuring his creditors of his integrity and his pride in his ‘two lovely daughters’ (Letter quoted in R. Brown's Memoirs of E. and A. Picken). About 1796 he settled in Edinburgh and tried business, first as a manager, and afterwards on his own account. Unsuccessful, he relapsed into teaching, and was known, about 1813, to Robert and William Chambers, his neighbours in Bristo Street, as well-meaning, but ‘sadly handicapped’ (Memoir of Robert Chambers, p. 72). Struggling to eke out a living, he continued to publish poems (Miscellaneous Poems, ii. 163); but his health gradually failed, and he died at Edinburgh of consumption in 1816, leaving a widow, three sons, and two daughters.
Picken's first publication was ‘Poems and Epistles, mostly in the Scottish Dialect, with a Glossary,’ 1788. In 1813 appeared in two volumes his ‘Miscellaneous Poems, Songs, &c., partly in the Scottish Dialect, with a copious Glossary.’ In 1815 Picken assisted Dr. Andrew Duncan with ‘Elogiorum Sepulchralium Edinensium Delectus,’ being monumental inscriptions selected from Edinburgh burial-grounds. His ‘Pocket Dictionary of the Scottish Dialect’ appeared anonymously in 1818. Jamieson, in his ‘Scottish Dictionary,’ frequently illustrates his definitions from Picken's works, and Picken's own glossaries and ‘Pocket Dictionary’ are very valuable. Several of his bright and humorous songs were popular, and may still be heard in the provinces; his descriptive pieces are meritorious, and his satire is relevant and pungent.
Picken's daughter, Joanna Belfrage Picken (1798–1859), tried, with the assistance of her sister Catherine, to establish a boarding-school in Musselburgh, East Lothian. Failure, it is said, was to some extent due to Joanna's satires on local celebrities.
