A painter whose reputation was made by the paintings he did of exotic lands, David Roberts was born and raised in Stockbridge, near Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, John Roberts, was an impoverished shoemaker, who, with his wife Christine, tried to support five children in a small house on Duncan's Land by the Water of Leith. The house remains standing in the 21st century. Only two of the children lived to maturity.

Roberts' mother encouraged his obvious art talent, and allowed him to sketch in charcoal on the white washed walls of the house. At the age ot twelve, he apprenticed for a summer to Gavin Beugo, a decorator from Edinburgh, and this training, demanding fifteen hours a day, was v...