National Galleries of Scotland

1787

This half-length portrait of Burns, framed within an oval, has become the most well-known and widely reproduced image of the famous Scottish poet. Nasmyth's painting, commissioned by the publisher William Creech, was to be engraved for a new edition of Burn's poems. He is shown fashionably dressed against a landscape, evoking his rural background in Alloway, Ayrshire. Burns and Nasmyth had become good friends, having been introduced to one another in Edinburgh by a mutual patron, Patrick Miller of Dalswinton. Nasmyth, pleased to have recorded Burns' likeness convincingly, decided to leave the painting in a slightly unfinished state.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 38.40 x 32.40 cm (framed: 63.50 x 57.00 x 9.00 cm)
• National Galleries of Scotland

1798

A naval officer from Dundee, Duncan's career had been worthy but unremarkable until his last posting, when he emerged as one of Britain's great heroes of the Napoleonic Wars. With Duncan at its command, a North Sea fleet achieved a resounding victory over the Dutch at the Battle of Camperdown on 11 October 1797. Danloux, painting two years after the event, imagines Duncan, calm in the midst of gun and cannon fire, on the deck of the Venerable. The officer blowing a trumpet symbolises Fame.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 269.00 x 195.80 cm (framed: 285.40 x 211.00 x 6.00 cm)
• National Galleries of Scotland

1822

Scott's historical novels were read and admired throughout Europe. Those which dealt with Scottish themes, like Heart of Midlothian and Waverley, have had a major influence on how Scots see their own past and on how Scotland is viewed from outside. This portrait was one of the last Raeburn ever worked on, the artist dying only days after its completion. Scott, however, is shown at the peak of his career. Within four years he was bankrupt, and his health was destroyed from the need to write his way out of debt.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 76.20 x 63.50 cm (framed: 97.00 x 84.50 x 11.50 cm)
• National Galleries of Scotland

1852

Hat in hand, as if bidding farewell, Alexander Morison, a pioneer of psychiatric medicine, stands before his estate in Newhaven, just north of Edinburgh. This portrait was painted at the end of Morison's seventeen years as consultant to Bethlem Asylum in Surrey . The artist, Richard Dadd, was one of Morison's patients. He had murdered his father believing him to be the devil. Dadd, hospitalised at Bethlem, did not visit Scotland, but based his image on a sketch by Morison's daughter. The two tiny women are fishwives, and are probably based on photographs taken by Hill and Adamson.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 51.10 x 61.30 cm
• National Galleries of Scotland