Samuel Scott (1702 – 1772) was an English painter who specialized in landscape painting and marine art.
Scott was born in London, and began painting around 1720. Nothing is known of his artistic training. He started as a maritime artist, painting men-of-war and other ships on calm seas in the style of Willem van de Velde, many of whose drawings he owned. He also painted a set of six pictures of settlements owned by the East India Company in collaboration with George Lambert. Scott painted the ships, Lambert the buildings and landscape. Writing in 1733, George Vertue included Scott among London's "most elevated men in art". Around this time he posed for the Portrait of Samuel Scott by Thomas Hudson.
From 27 to 31 May 1732, he made a celebrated "Five days' Peregrination" to the Medway estuary and the Isle of Sheppey in company with William Hogarth and others. An account of their trip was written by Ebenezer Forrest and eventually published in 1782, with engravings taken from drawings by Hogarth and Scott.
In the early 1740s, Scott began making sketches of London, especially of the new Westminster Bridge, then under construction. When, following the arrival of Canaletto in London in 1746, paintings of views of the city became fashionable, he began working the sketches up into oil paintings. He painted at least eleven versions of a view of the Old London Bridge, the earliest dating from 1747. Scott continued to paint copies of it after 1757, when the houses lining the bridge, shown in the painting, had been demolished. The London Bridge pictures were often painted as one of a pair, with an image of the Tower of London or Westminster Bridge as a pendant.
Between 1761 and 1771, he exhibited three works at the Society of Artists, one at the Free Society of artists, and one, The Thames and the Tower of London, at the Royal Academy's Exhibition of 1771. He was one of the early draughtsmen in watercolours, and was called the father of English watercolour, but his chief works were in oil. Some of Scott's most celebrated paintings were his depictions of scenes during the War of Jenkins' Ear. Scott earned a considerable reputation for his shore and river scenes, which were well-drawn and painted, and enlivened with figures. Horace Walpole, who had a large collection of his works, said that they "will charm in every age" and that "if he was second to Vandeveldt in sea pieces, he excelled him in variety." His views of London Bridge, the Custom-house Quay, and other pictures of the Thames earned him the name "the English Canaletto".
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Samuel Scott 
Departure from England of Francis, Duke of Lorraine, c.1732 
A Danish Timber Bark Getting Under Way, c.1736 
A First-Rate Shortening Sail, c.1736 
Shipping off Dover, c.1738 
The Capture of Puerto Bello, c.1740 
View of the Thames at Wapping, c.1740 
The Building of Westminster Bridge, c.1742 
The Building of Westminster Bridge, c.1742 
The Thames at Westminster Bridge with Barges, c.1746 
Wager's Action off Cartagena, c.1747 
A Calm- A British Man-of-War Firing a Salute, c.1749 
Lord Anson's Victory off Cape Finisterre, c.1749 
Greenwich Hospital from the North Bank of the Thames, c.1750 
View of the City of London from the South Bank of the Thames Showing
London Bridge and the Fishmongers' Hall, with The Monument Beyond, c.1750
An Arch of Westminster Bridge. c.1750 
English war frigate, firing a gun salute off the coast, c.1751 
Horse Guards Parade, c.1755 
A Thames Wharf, c.1757 
Action off the Cape of Good Hope, c.1757 
Old London Bridge, c.1758 
A View of Alexander Pope's Villa, Twickenham, c.1759 
The Thames at Twickenham, c.1760 
The Construction of Blackfriars Bridge, c.1760-63 
French Fireships Attacking the English Fleet off Quebec, 28 June 1759, c.1767 
Ludlow Castle with Dinham Weir, from the South-West, c.1765-69 
The Pool of London, c.1769 
The Thames and the Tower of London, c.1771
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