George Maccallum was an Edinburgh-born sculptor active in the second half of the nineteenth century. His portrait busts and statuettes quickly earned the approval of art critics and fellow artists. From 1860 onwards, he exhibited each year at the Royal Scottish Academy, and The Scotsman newspaper looked forward to Maccallum’s promising future. Then, in late summer 1868 he was ‘suddenly seized […] with some fainting fits’. He died of heart disease a few days later, aged twenty-eight. This portrait by Edinburgh-based painter John Rattray was described in Maccallum’s obituary as ‘very faithful’.