Robert Burns
(1759-1796), PoetMid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue Entry
Sitter associated with 11 portraits
Robert Burns came from a humble farming background in Scotland. With his father’s death in 1786, he was pushed to financial ruin which forced him to accept a position as a bookkeeper on a friend’s sugar plantation in Jamaica. While Burns welcomed this break from his woes, he did not relish his role, describing himself as ‘a poor Negro driver’ and writing a later abolitionist poem ‘The Slave’s Lament’. In the same year he gained fame with Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect and the Scots Musical Museum (1787), which contains some of his best-known songs. Burns was celebrated for using his personal experience of rustic subjects and local Scots dialects; Wordsworth described 'Him who walked in glory and in joy/ Behind his plough, upon the mountainside.'
Watch a film clip on the sitter from the BBC Archive in the Media section below
by Alexander Nasmyth
oil on canvas, circa 1821-1822, based on a work of 1787
NPG 46
Album introductory carte-de-visite
by Unknown photographer
albumen carte-de-visite, 1860s
NPG x197215
by Edward Mitchell, after Alexander Nasmyth
line engraving, (1787)
NPG D32442
by John Beugo, after Alexander Nasmyth
stipple engraving, published 1787
NPG D13790
by Paton Thomson, after Alexander Nasmyth
line engraving, published 1798
NPG D32441
published by James Cochrane & Co, after John Miers
line engraving, published 1834 (1787)
NPG D16378
Fictitious portrait of Robert Burns
by John Burnet, after Sir William Allan
line engraving, circa 1838
NPG D32438
by John Christian Zeitter, after Alexander Nasmyth
mezzotint, published 1839
NPG D32440
Burns and Highland Mary (Mary Campbell ('Highland Mary'); Robert Burns)
by Henry Edward Dawe
mezzotint, published 1849
NPG D32445
after Alexander Nasmyth
gravure, late 19th century
NPG D32439
Unknown man, formerly known as Robert Burns
by Unknown artist
chromolithograph, early 20th century
NPG D32444
Links
- Bachelor's Club, Mauchline, Ayrshire, Scotland
- Burn's Cottage Museum, Alloway, Scotland
- Burns House Museum, Ayrshire, Scotland
- National Burns Collection, Scotland
- Robert Burns Centre, Dumfries, Scotland
- Robert Burns House, Dumfries, Scotland
- Robert Burns in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Robert Burns World Federation
- Writers' Museum, Edinburgh, Scotland
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