Elected ARSA: 16 March 1932
Elected RSA: 10 February 1937
James Bell Anderson was born in Edinburgh on the 14th July 1886, and was educated at Bo’ness Academy. He received his art training at the School of Art at the Mound, Edinburgh, winning a scholarship in his first year at Patrick Allan Fraser’s College at Hospital field, Arbroath, where he worked for four years under George Harcourt ARA. He also attended Académie Julian in Paris.
He held his first exhibition at Bo’ness, and in 1912 settled in Glasgow as a portrait painter. Among his first important commissions were those of Lord Strathclyde, then Alexander Ure, K.C., Lord-Advocate for Scotland, and Sir Robert Murray, Ure’s chief political agent.
Other public presentations followed, including the official portrait of Sir Daniel M. Stevenson, Lord Provost of Glasgow, now in Kelvingrove; James Aikman Smith of the Scottish Rugby Union and W. Campbell Johnstone, LL.D., Deputy Keeper of the Signet. The Constitutional Club selected Mr. Anderson to finish a portrait of Bonar Law which had been begun by the late Sir James Guthrie.
Elected an Associate of the Academy in 1932 he became an Academician in 1936, his Diploma work being a sensitive interpretation of his wife.
