Robert Burns

Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue Entry

Sitter associated with 13 portraits
Robert Burns was born into a struggling farming family in the lowlands of Scotland, where he was brought up on a rich oral culture of folk songs and tales in the Scots dialect. He was also taught to read and write in English and Latin. His first major publication, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), was presented and received as the work of an uneducated ploughman poet writing songs about the rural world around him. The book was immediately popular and its success was a factor in Burns abandoning plans to emigrate to Jamaica, made during a crisis in his personal life. He later published an abolitionist poem, ‘The Slave’s Lament’. Despite struggling with depression and the consequences of numerous affairs, as well as working as a farmer and exciseman, Burns continued to write and publish poetry until his early death at 37. On his death he was recognised as Scotland’s national bard, a position he has held ever since.