Scotland played a leading role in the European Enlightenment during the eighteenth century. Many of the ideas that still shape and influence our think­ing today were first generated in the great universities, societies and salons of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. There is perhaps no better place for us to re-create this astonishing convergence of talent than in the rooms devoted to the Enlightenment at the Portrait Gallery where philosophers, scientists, artists and economists are reunited in painted and sculpted form. Ramsay’s famous portrait of David Hume (1711–1776) occupies a special place among these works. It is a testament to the close friendship between the artist and the celebrated philosopher but it is also one of the finest renderings of human genius in the collection.

The portrait of Hume was originally conceived as a companion to a painting by Ramsay of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French–Swiss social philosopher and moralist (fig.27). In 1766, Hume helped Rousseau to escape persecution in France, offering him refuge in London and securing him a pension from King George III. In Ramsay’s portrait, Rousseau is depicted in the famous Armenian costume that aroused much comment in London society at the time. He turns towards the viewer with an engaging stare that conveys both intelligence and a sense of nervous intensity. By contrast, the portrait of Hume exudes a sense of calm and confidence. The Scot is shown in a striking scarlet jacket, perhaps the uniform of his recent role as Embassy Secretary in Paris. He is leaning on two books, one of which can be identified as a volume of the Roman historian Tacitus. 

As a potential sitter, Hume’s features were unpromising. His looks were described in unflattering terms by one contemporary: ‘His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide and without any other expression than that of imbecility.’ Yet in Ramsay’s sympathetic image, Hume’s face and upper body radiate against the dark background as if to suggest the very embodiment of learning and reason. The philosopher looks both at us and beyond us, as if his mind is deeply engaged in thought.

The portraits of Rousseau and Hume might have become a lasting record of the friendship between two of the great­est thinkers of the eighteenth century. However, the relationship soon soured into a now famously bitter quarrel that threatened to undermine Hume’s reputa­tion for virtue and called Rousseau’s sanity into question. The increasingly paranoid Rousseau became convinced that Hume was plotting to discredit him. The portrait by Ramsay, which Rousseau found unfa­vourable to his image, became implicated in the scandal. Later, the two works hung together in Hume’s parlour in Edinburgh until his death in 1776. With great good fortune they were acquired at different times by the National Galleries where the uneasy relationship between Hume and Rousseau can now continue in perpetuity.

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