Long-lost portrait of Scotland’s national bard on public display for first time
The painting, which fetched tens of thousands of pounds at auction last year, was lost for more than 200 years.
A long-lost portrait of Scotland’s national bard that was found more than 200 years after it seemingly vanished has gone on public display for the first time.
The portrait of Robert Burns painted by Sir Henry Raeburn, King George IV’s own painter, had been missing for some 220 years, but was recovered in March last year during a house clearout in Surrey.
The painting, commissioned in 1803, was purchased for £84,320 (including buyer’s premium) at auction in London shortly after it was discovered.
The portrait was sold to William Zachs, a Burns enthusiast and director of Blackie House Library and Museum, Edinburgh, who has loaned the painting to National Galleries Scotland in the Scottish capital.
Poetry and art lovers alike can view the portrait, free of charge, at the gallery ahead of Burns Night on January 25.
The painting then goes to the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, South Ayrshire, from July 21 onwards.
After the discovery of the painting, it was cleaned and professionally examined, and experts determined it was the long-lost artwork.
Having seemingly vanished from existence for so many years, its whereabouts were pondered for decades, until it was eventually discovered by chance during the house clearing.
Sir Henry’s portrait of the bard was based on another painting of him, created by Alexander Nasmyth in 1787.
Mr Zachs said: “This week at Burns suppers in Scotland and around the world we toast the immortal memory of the poet.
“Now we have a new immortal visual memory – a once lost painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, the Scottish great portrait artist, that depicts Robert Burns not just as a genius poet but as a celebrated (and handsome) Scotsman whose significance would endure ’till a’ the seas gang dry’.”
Lesley Stevenson, senior conservator of paintings at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “Raeburn’s expressive, seemingly effortless brushwork, the characteristic warm palette, soft, atmospheric lighting and sensitive rendering of the instantly recognisable Robert Burns are a joy.
“This is a significant discovery and one we can all celebrate.”
Duncan Thomson, former keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery between 1982 and 1997 and curator of the last major exhibition on Sir Henry Raeburn, said: “The rediscovery of this portrait of Burns, after having disappeared for 200 years, is of enormous significance, linking the poet with Scotland’s greatest artist.
“Although Raeburn was working from an image made by another painter, the portrait has that wonderful freshness of observation that marks Raeburn’s work at its best.
“It is more than likely that Raeburn had seen Burns in his heyday in Edinburgh a decade earlier and had observed that glowing eye that had so impressed the young Walter Scott.
“The result is a portrait that speaks in an entirely new way of the warmth, the sensuality and the profound intelligence that we find in Burns’s poetry.”
