Raeburn’s striking portrait of the Reverend Robert Walker, known by its popular title of The Skating Minister, is one of the most recognisable images in the Scottish National Gallery. It is not easy to define precisely where the enduring appeal of this picture lies. There is something faintly amusing in the elegant pose of the minister as he glides forwards on the ice, seemingly lost in thought. With his calm and intelligent expression betraying just the beginnings of a smile, the subject retains the dignity of his calling albeit in an unexpected setting. But perhaps it is the simplicity of the composition, with the dark silhouette of the skater set against the frozen lake and the leaden sky, that makes for such a memorable painting. In his combination of a sporting picture with a portrait, Raeburn has managed to create an image which is both dynamic and wonderfully serene.
The subject, Robert Walker, was the minister at the Canongate Kirk, a prominent Presbyterian parish church at the lower end of Edinburgh’s High Street. He was raised in Holland (where he might have first learned to skate) and he is shown wearing Dutch-style skates. Far from being an austere and remote man of the cloth, Robert Walker was an active participant in society with a lively mind and a certain sense of humour. We know that he was a member of the Edinburgh Skating Society which practised on nearby Duddingston Loch and this is the source for the traditional identification of the landscape setting which the artist evokes in a subtle range of greys and pinks.
Before it became such a public and popular image, this painting had a lengthy private life. It remained in the possession of the subject’s family well into the twentieth century and it is remarkable that the picture was virtually unknown and never reproduced until it came up for auction in 1949. Raeburn would probably be surprised at the subsequent fame and reputation of what was, for him, an atypical and informal work. The lack of any documentation about its creation, together with the fact that the format is very unusual in Raeburn’s work, has prompted some scholars to question the Scottish painter’s authorship, and it has been linked instead with a French painter, Henri-Pierre Danloux. However, the tradition in Robert Walker’s family was quite clear that the painting was by Raeburn.
When Walker died in 1808, Raeburn was named as one of the trustees of his estate so it seems likely that the artist and the minister were good friends. There is no evidence that they had skated together but the painting certainly has an intimate and affectionate quality and may well be a memento of their close acquaintance. There are plenty of indications of Raeburn’s fluid and spontaneous touch in the picture as well as some very seductive details such as the scoring left by the skates on the ice or the wonderfully assured handling of paint in Robert Walker’s features. It is a remarkable painting and, unless some as yet undiscovered document or evidence comes to light to prove otherwise, the skating minister’s position as an icon of Scottish art seems secure.
This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.