There are surprisingly few contemporary portraits of Robert Burns (1759–1796) who is said to have been a rather reluctant sitter. This small picture is now the best-known portrait of Scotland’s national bard. Reproduced in almost every conceivable form from postage stamps to shortbread tins, it is now familiar across the world.

Robert Burns was born in Alloway in Ayrshire, the son of tenant farmers who ensured that he enjoyed a good education. As a young man, his early efforts in farming were unsuccessful and he began to turn his attention to a passion for poetry, publish­ing the famous Kilmarnock edition of his verse in 1786 to immediate and sensational acclaim. Later in the same year, Burns vis­ited Edinburgh where, as the ‘heaven-sent ploughman’ he was feted by leading society figures. The portrait by Nasmyth was com­missioned by the publisher William Creech soon after his arrival, to be engraved for a new edition of his poems. As Burns noted, ‘I am getting my phiz done by an eminent engraver, and, if it can be ready in time, I will appear in my book, looking like all other fools to my title page.’

By tradition, Nasmyth’s portrait was painted quickly and left unfinished as the artist was afraid of losing the likeness. While there are few hints of the complex­ities of Burns’s character, he is depicted as a lively and intelligent young man, set against a landscape background that evokes his Ayrshire roots. Walter Scott, who as a sixteen-year-old had met Burns briefly at an Edinburgh social gathering, later claimed that Nasmyth’s portrait had ‘diminished’ the poet’s features. According to Scott, Burns was ‘strong and robust’ with a certain ‘dignified plainness and sim­plicity’. Nasmyth’s image is indeed a rather summary portrayal of Scotland’s most famous son, but this modest work has helped to shape our modern perception of Burns and the qualities of democracy, gen­erosity and honesty that we now associate with his personality and his writing.

Burns and Nasmyth became firm friends, sharing a love of nature as well as an interest in radical politics. On his trips to Edinburgh, Burns was a frequent visitor to Nasmyth’s studio and they often walked together in the surrounding countryside. In 1828, many years after Burns’s early death, Nasmyth made another portrait of him, this time showing the poet standing against a view of the Auld Brig o’ Doon at Alloway in his native Ayrshire (fig.28). This more Romantic image is also in the collection of the Portrait Gallery.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.