Can artistic ability from distant ancestors persist to present day descendants?

[Althea7]

Is it possible for a trait like artistic ability to be passed down many, many generations on recessive genes that skip generations and appear randomly?

I am wondering if there are elements in our genes that are persistent and don't get watered down through the generations?  So that tiny bit that we get from our 5th great grandfather, or further back, can actually manifest very strongly in several of his present day descendants?

It is likely that some people who get these genes just won't have the circumstances to manifest artistic ability.

Maybe this is something that geneticists just haven't even thought about, as it conflicts with the idea that the genes we get from distant ancestors get watered down, eventually to nothing.  But in my lifetime Lamarkianism got changed from dismissed and unscientific to Epigenetics, even though Darwin agreed with Lamark. 

Maybe some geneticists somewhere have done research on this?  Does anyone here have traits in their family tree from distant ancestors that keep popping up all over their family trees to the present day?

[DavidG02]

No

[KGarrad]

No.

My 6xGreat Grandfather was John Constable - no artistic traits passed to any of my family!

[ptdrifter]

I think that artistic and musical ability would be governed by a group of genes rather than just one so getting all of them passed down would be unlikely. However genes are randomly inherited, so it's not impossible.
Shuffle and pass on some of a deck of cards, and 4 aces might get included every time.

[Ruskie]

It’s a no from me as well.

This brings to mind many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are when celebrities are looking to their ancestors for certain traits to explain where they inherited them from. They often find it, but that is probably more coincidental. I really don’t think it is inherited.

Re Artistic ability - it is more likely to be passed from parent to child if the child is exposed to artistic endeavours within the household, like most things.

[Andrew Tarr]

I suppose there may be a recessive possibility, but I can't see it hiding for several generations without being diluted.  My guess is more nurture than nature.  My parents met at the RCA in London, father was a painter, mother a textile person.  I have very faint artistic abilities but became a chemist.  I haven't come across any arty indications on either side of the tree in earlier generations either, tho maternal gt-grandmother taught music after being widowed at about 40.

[PrawnCocktail]

I wish - my grandmother was a good artist, and an excellent needlewoman.

She was also a good cook. So was my my mother - and my daughter. It skipped a generation with me!

 

[susieroe]

I'd like to think so. My great, great Grandad was a professor of music, he is listed as a musician when he was in the Household Cavalry, and taught flute afterwards as a profession. His son, my great Grandad was a Musician by trade at one point, but I don't know what he played. His son, my Grandad played piano beautifully and won a place at a London Church choir school (which he couldn't take up as his mother was a widow and the family was poor). His sister was into amateur dramatics, singing Gilbert and Sullivan and like music. My father played clarinet, alto sax and violin, playing in dance bands across Leicestershire, and had his own band for some time. My brother taught himself violin up to a point, and played tunes he composed on harmonica. Then there's me: not a musical bone in my body, tone deaf, singing like a rusty nail. We two are last of our line and I don't think our 2 cousins have a musical bent.  If it is in the genes it appears to go down one male line only.

On my mother's side, Grandad was a shoe designer  by trade, we had his great book of wonderful designs. My mother was a watercolourist and she was very creative, designing clothes which she made, and also made and designed  marquetry work. Art was one of my best subjects, my teacher encouraged me to take up[ dress design and commercial art.

Perhaps all a coincidence, but I think it's likely.  don't see why, if we can inherit other traits, that we can't inherit certain abilities in the same way. 

[Gillg]

I, too, have several generations of musical people in my family, performers and teachers of various instruments, but I think that that this trait was encouraged by each generation of parents in their children, building on a natural ability which was perhaps inherited. I inherited this musical ability to a certain extent, though my father's lack of musical skills did cancel out some of it, so although I play the piano and still sing in choirs, I seem to have channelled my inheritance into speaking foreign languages.  I suppose the ability to hear a sound and reproduce it works in both skills. However, this is not a random recessive gene, but something which has been passed down and encouraged over each generation, so I guess I shall also have to say no.

Going further back in my family's history there seem to be few skills which I might have inherited from my labourer and millworker ancestors, but who knows what unknown abilities they might have had which were not encouraged by their families.