McCulloch was born in Glasgow, a city which at the time lacked training and exhibition facilities for artists. He thus followed his muse to Edinburgh in 1825 where he was greatly influenced by the Nasmyth tradition of landscape painting. Returning to his native city three years later, he spent the next decade establishing his reputation as an accomplished landscape painter. Established in the capital again from 1838, his popularity soared with large-scale, somewhat romanticised studies of dramatic Highland landscapes which appealed greatly to Victorian tastes. It was against Mculloch's contrived, melodramatic and quintessentially Victorian style that the avant-garde 'Glasgow Boys' specifically reacted.