Sir William David Ross

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(b London, 3 June 1794; d London, 20 Jan 1860). English painter. The son of William and Maria Ross, both painters, he entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1808 and won numerous awards. In 1814, after becoming assistant to the miniature painter Andrew Robertson, he abandoned his intention of becoming a history painter to follow the same career. Adopting Robertson's use of heavily gummed stipple and large rectangular sheets of ivory, he earned admiration for his gift of presenting his subjects in the most agreeable light. In 1837 he was appointed miniature painter to Queen Victoria and in this position portrayed members not only of the English royal family but also of other princely houses of Europe. A characteristic court portrait is his miniature Princes Ernst and Edward of Leiningen with Queen Victoria's Macaw and her Dog 'Islay' (1839; Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.; see MINIATURE, fig. 8). He painted over 2,200 miniatures in the course of his career.

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Ross, William David (1877-1971) British classical scholar and moral philosopher. Educated in Edinburgh and Oxford, Ross taught in Oxford, where he edited the Oxford translations of Aristotle from 1908 to 1931. His own work included The Right and the Good (1930) and Foundations of Ethics (1939), defending a version of the intuitionism of G. E. Moore. The upshot was a stern ethics opposed to consequentialism, in which prima facie rights and duties jostle one another for priority.