Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 25 - Perigal
Perigal. — This refugee family came to London from Normandy, and I regret that I have not met with a pedigree. As early as 12th October 1690, Jacques Perigal married Esther Le Marcis, in the French Church in the Savoy. Francois Perigal was married in the French Church of Castle Street, Leicester Square, in 1726. We can trace three generations in the Directorate of the French Hospital — John, 24th July 1718, Francis, 12th July 1769, John, 14th July 1784. Perhaps we may claim as a son or grandson of John, Mr. Arthur Perigal, an artist, who was a pupil of Fuseli in the Royal Academy. He removed to Edinburgh, and became a portrait and landscape painter there, and also a teacher of drawing. His portraits and landscapes appeared for the first time in the Scottish Academy Exhibition of 1833. He died on 19th October 1847, and his widow, Louisa Susanah, on 19th April 1861 . His son, the second and best known Arthur Perigal, was born in London in August 1816. He was his father’s pupil, and followed in his father’s steps, but did not paint portraits. He executed fully three hundred landscapes. Mis name first appears in the Academy’s catalogue in 1838; in 1841 he became an Associate; and in 1868 a Royal Scottish Academician. His studies from nature, in which the perspective was most effective, and his water-colour pictures were more successful works of art than his finished paintings in oil. But many of the latter were of undoubted merit, including scenes, obtained by annual tours, in Italy, Switzerland, and Norway, among the mountains of Wales, the Scottish Border, the banks of the Tweed and Teviot, the Trossachs, and the North. He was a member of the Edinburgh Angling Club and similar associations. The Illustrated News winds up his career thus:— “Mr. Arthur Perigal, R.S.A., a distinguished painter, especially of Highland scenery, and an enthusiastic angler, died on 5th June 1884, aged sixty-eight.” (See the Scotsman newspaper.)