The Skating Minister

The Reverend Robert Walker, minister of the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh, was a founding member of the Edinburgh Skating Club — the first ice-skating society in Britain. Raeburn painted him on Duddingston Loch outside the city, arms crossed in front of his body, gliding on one leg. The crossed-arms pose was the standard Enlightenment posture of scientific composure — the same pose contemporary anatomists were painted in. Raeburn was placing a rational Presbyterian minister onto the frozen loch as an image of Enlightenment leisure. The painting was almost unknown until the National Gallery of Scotland bought it in 1949. It is now the most reproduced Scottish painting in existence. Now at Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh @nationalgalleries