Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2015 Meet the Masters: Highlights from the Scottish National Gallery
The Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch
Angus Trumble
15/16 July 2015
Lecture summary:
The Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch, c. 1798-1800, has not only become synonymous with the art of Sir Henry Raeburn, but has also assumed the character of an icon of the Scottish enlightenment, and of Scottish painting itself. Ten years ago, in a long article in the Burlington Magazine, Stephen Lloyd cast serious doubt upon the attribution to Raeburn on various grounds, and proposed instead that this action portrait was instead painted by the Frenchman Henri-Pierre Danloux. The ensuing controversy, and rebuttal, has shed much new light on the picture, and indeed the artist, but raises far broader questions as to the relationship between “technical” art history and connoisseurship. What are the limitations of each, and both in sometimes fraught dialogue? If, as is generally accepted, while iconic, The Reverend Robert Walker is a very unusual product of Raeburn’s studio, just how unusual can a picture be, at least in what used to be called an artist’s oeuvre, to raise and justify doubts as to its authorship? What factors, including a relatively secure provenance and close, not to say intense “looking,” may legitimately be marshalled in defence of the longstanding attribution to Raeburn? What is the role of scholarly consensus or, indeed, dissent in these debates?
Slide list:
1. Henry Raeburn, The Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch, c. 1798-1800, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (I shall return again and again to this image)
2. Henry Raeburn, Self-portrait, c. 1815, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
3. Henry Raeburn, Sir Walter Scott, 1808, oil on canvas, The Duke of Buccleuch, Bowhill
4. Henry Raeburn, Sir John and Lady Clerk of Penicuik, c. 1792, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
5. Henry Raeburn, William Glendonwyn of Parton, early 1790s, oil on canvas, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
6. Henry Raeburn, Dr Nathaniel Spens, early 1790s, oil on canvas, Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers)
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7. Henry Raeburn, William Glendonwyn of Parton, early 1790s, oil on canvas, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
8. Henry Raeburn, Robert Ferguson of Raith, early 1790s? oil on canvas, Private collection
9. Henry Raeburn, Robert Ferguson of Raith and Lieut-General Sir Ronald Ferguson, c. 1790, oil on canvas, Private collection
10 Henry Raeburn, David Hunter of Blackness, c. 1788, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland
11 Henry Raeburn, The Reverend Hugh Blair, c. 1798, oil on canvas, Kirk of the Canongate, Edinburgh
12 Henri-Pierre Danloux, Sergeant Mather of the Dumfriesshire Militia, 1799, oil on canvas, The Duke of Buccleuch, Drumlanrig
13 Henri-Pierre Danloux, Mademoiselle Duthé, 1792, oil on canvas, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe
14 Gilbert Stuart, William Grant of Congalton, 1782, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
References:
Duncan Thomson et al., Raeburn: The Art of Sir Henry Raeburn, 1756‒1823, Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997.
Duncan Thomson and Lynne Gladstone-Millar, The Skating Minister: The Story Behind the Painting, Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2004.
Stephen Lloyd, “Elegant and Graceful Attitudes: The Painter of the ‘Skating Minister’,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 147, No. 1228, July 2005, pp. 474‒86.
Duncan Thomson, “Raeburn Revisited: The ‘Skating Minister’,” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 149, No. 1248, March 2007, pp. 185‒90.
For access to all past lecture notes visit: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/current-members/member-events/meet-the-masters/