A long-lost portrait of Robert Burns by Sir Henry Raeburn is now on view at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. The painting was discovered at a London house sale last year.
Scotland’s most famous bard, Robert Burns (1759–1796) is perhaps best known for songs such as “A Red, Red Rose” (1794) and “Auld Lang Syne” (1788), which he based on traditional Scottish ballads. While they lived on the same street, Burns seems to have never sat for his contemporary, the Scottish portraitist Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823). But it has long been known from Raeburn’s letters that seven years after Burns’s death, Raeburn made a copy of 1787 painting of him by Alexander Nasmyth.
The copy was commissioned by London publishers Cadell & Davies to be used as the frontispiece for a new edition of Burns’s works. Shortly after the painting was completed, however, it disappeared.
The Raeburn work reappeared during a house clearance in England last year. Consigned to Wimbledon Auctions in London, it was offered as being “in the manner of Sir Henry Raeburn” with an estimated sale price of £300–£500. After nine minutes of bidding, it sold for £68,000 ($92,000) to William Zachs, an Edinburgh-based art collector and the director of Blackie House Library and Museum.
After restoration, the painting was brought to Scotland, where experts confirmed it to be an original Raeburn. As noted in the National Galleries of Scotland’s blog, the work is not just a copy of the earlier original, but a masterpiece in its own right, with Dr. Duncan Thomson, former keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, remarking on ‘[the] wonderful freshness of observation that marks Raeburn’s work at its best.’
The painting is now hanging next to the Nasmyth portrait at the Scottish National Galleries, just in time for Scotland’s annual celebration of Burns’s birthday on January 25.
