The Lost Portrait of Robert Burns by Sir Henry Raeburn
In 1803 Scotland’s greatest portrait painter took on a commission to paint Scotland’s greatest poet, Robert Burns. The whereabouts of this painting was unknown – until very recently.
The portrait is currently on loan to the National Galleries Scotland: National, on the Mound in Edinburgh, for all to see.
It will then tour to the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum (National Trust for Scotland) in Alloway from 21 July.
In this film, Burns scholar and collector William Zachs, the Director of Blackie House Library and Museum, narrates the story of a great Scottish painting that had been lost for over 200 years.
Produced by Blackie House Library and Museum
© Blackie House Library and Museum 2026
This week at Burns Suppers in Scotland and around the world we toast the Immortal Memory of the poet. Now we have a new immortal visual memory – a once lost painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, the Scottish great portrait artist, that depicts Robert Burns not just as a genius poet but as a celebrated (and handsome) Scotsman whose significance would endure “till a’ the seas gang dry”.
William Zachs, owner of the painting and Director of Blackie House Library and Museum in Edinburgh
Raeburn’s expressive, seemingly effortless brushwork, the characteristic warm palette, soft, atmospheric lighting and sensitive rendering of the instantly recognisable Robert Burns, are a joy. This is a significant discovery and one we can all celebrate.
Lesley Stevenson, Senior Conservator (Paintings), at the National Galleries of Scotland
The rediscovery of this portrait of Burns, after having disappeared for two hundred years, is of enormous significance, linking the poet with Scotland’s greatest artist. Although Raeburn was working from an image made by another painter, the portrait has that wonderful freshness of observation that marks Raeburn’s work at its best. It is more than likely that Raeburn had seen Burns in his heyday in Edinburgh a decade earlier, and had observed that glowing eye that had so impressed the young Walter Scott. The result is a portrait that speaks in an entirely new way of the warmth, the sensuality and the profound intelligence that we find in Burns’s poetry.
Dr Duncan Thomson, former Keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery 1982-1997 and curator of the last major exhibition on Sir Henry Raeburn, National Galleries of Scotland, 1997
This is a once in a generation discovery: thrilling for lovers of both Burns and Raeburn.
James Holloway, former Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery 1997-2012
Raeburn’s portrait of Burns shines with the glow which is typical of the painter. It shows the now-dead poet moving into the realm of legendary icon, a transition he was to accomplish within less than a generation. In that sense the Burns we celebrate today is Raeburn’s Burns, though until now we did not know it.
Professor Murray Pittock, Pro Vice-Principal University of Glasgow
A lost likeness of Burns and a new Raeburn to boot: this really is two red letter days in one. There have been rumours of the portrait’s existence over many decades, but the recent detective work to authenticate has been simply outstanding.
Professor Gerard Carruthers FRSE, Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow
The text below is adapted from an Immortal Memory proposed by William Zachs at a recent Burns Supper in St Andrews.
The New Immortal Visual Memory
Virtually everyone knows the iconic image of Scottish poet Robert Burns, painted by Alexander Nasmyth in early 1787 when Burns was 28 years old. The portrait has hung in the Scottish National Gallery since 1872 when Burns’ son William Nicol Burns gifted it to the Nation. Nasmyth produced the small portrait a matter of months after this farmer-poet from Ayrshire arrived in Scotland’s capital, hailed as the ‘heaven-taught plowman’ and feted by the great and the good – high and the humble alike.
By permission of the National Galleries of Scotland
Burns’ poetic gifts were first witnessed in the summer of 1786 with the publication in Kilmarnock of a book called Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The BHLM collection holds several of these first editions. Burns himself had what you might call ‘crowd-funded’ the publication, cajoling his friends to hand over three shillings for the promise of a copy. Just over 600 of these sold quickly.
If Burns had never written another line, he still would be remembered for some of the very best poetry of all time: ‘To a Mouse’, ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, ‘Scotch Drink’, among the poems published in this debut volume. Happily, hundreds of other poems and songs would follow in the remaining decade of his short yet prolific life. If the epic ‘Tam O’Shanter’ and the rousing ‘Scots Wha Hae’ had been the sum of his output after the Kilmarnock edition surely it would be enough to secure his enduring status as Scotland’s National Poet.
Upon his arrival in Edinburgh, Burns met the successful bookseller and publisher William Creech. Together, they planned a second edition to meet the demand for copies, with a handful of additional poems, including the newly written ‘To a Haggis’, the feature poem at Burns Suppers. For the publication of this Edinburgh edition Creech wanted a portrait of his handsome young author. But to make this engraving first an oil portrait was required. And it was for this reason that Creech had approached Alexander Nasmyth.
Nasmyth reluctantly took on the commission. Scottish landscapes were his forte. Portraiture was not. Burns sat for Nasmyth half a dozen times at his studio in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh before the finished work was delivered to Creech. With this painting in hand, Creech then engaged the local engraver, John Beugo, to make a copperplate.
(left) By permission of the National Galleries of Scotland
Beugo studied Nasmyth’s painting; he was well practiced at translating the language of oil paint brushed onto a canvas and transferring it onto the unforgiving but durable medium of copper. The problem for Beugo was not the routine process of reversing the image or of reducing its size. The problem was the disparity Beugo saw between Nasmyth’s portrait and the flesh and blood of man himself – Robert Burns, whom Beugo had met at Creech’s shop. Keen to produce the best result, Creech arranged for the poet to sit for Beugo.
If this new edition was to sell well, it was essential to capture that vital creative energy of this newly minted literary genius. ‘I am getting my phiz done by an eminent engraver’, Burns told a friend, ‘and will appear in my book, looking like all other fools, to my title-page’ (Letter to John Ballantine, 24 Feb. 1787).
It is worth noting that neither Nasmyth nor Beugo accepted payment for the commissions, such was the aura that Burns emanated. This certainly would have pleased William Creech who, though instrumental in marketing Burns as an author, arguably took advantage of him in driving stern deals for subsequent editions and copyrights. Burns and Beugo became good friends, not only drinking together but taking French lessons. At the time, and ever since, many (apparently including Nasmyth himself) acknowledged the nuanced improvements of Beugo’s engraving in capturing Burns’ likeness and demeanour.
When this Edinburgh edition appeared in April 1787 more than 3000 copies of the book – each with the engraving of Burns – migrated across Scotland, through England, and far beyond. A long list of subscribers, given in the first pages of this volume, pinpoint the names of the individuals and families who would have first cast their eyes on this image of Burns.
In the 239 years since the appearance of Beugo’s engraving, the portrait which originated with Nasmyth has imprinted itself everywhere. It’s on biscuit tins and cigar boxes, matchboxes, postcards, tea towels, ceramics, bottles of whisky, beer, even Coke and milk bottles.
Early on, Nasmyth’s original was frequently copied to size in oil on canvas. Some of these copies were competently done but all were of course inferior to Nasmyth’s original. BHLM holds two of these.
In the next decade, Creech would publish two further editions of Burns’ Poems, before the poet’s untimely death on the 21st of July in 1796 at the age of 37. Along with the engraving, to each of these publications, Burns added a handful of new poems. During this decade, Burns also collaborated with two other publishers, James Johnstone and George Thomson, to produce a remarkable body of Scottish song – sometimes Burns wrote new lyrics for well known tunes: ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, ‘Red Red Rose’, ‘Scots Wha Hae’, are superlative examples of such original compositions. In other instances, Burns revised an existing text, such as the song ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
In 1801, five years after Burns’ death – on July 21st – the first Burns Supper was held. The location was fitting: the cottage in Alloway where he had been born in 1759, which conveniently, was a public travern at the time. In 1802, the second Burns Supper was moved to the end of January to mark The Bard’s birthday.
Not long after these early Burns Suppers, the poet’s Edinburgh and London publishers, planned a new authoritative edition. This would be edited by Burns’ brother, Gilbert, with new material taken from unpublished manuscripts. It was also time, the London publisher Thomas Cadell felt, to commission a new portrait – a portrait that would reflect the legacy, the immortality of Burns, not just as a poet but as a great Scotsman.
By permission of the San Antonio Museum of Art
To this end Cadell wrote to the man who was then in possession of Nasmyth’s original oil painting. This was one Alexander Cunningham, a close friend of Burns who had been one of The Bard’s literary executors. Cunningham was a well-connected figure in Edinburgh – a lawyer turned jeweller – and a good friend of the artist Henry Raeburn who by this time was well established as a portrait painter. Born in Edinburgh a few years before Burns, Raeburn had returned from his European travels at just the same time Burns had arrived in Edinburgh at the end of 1786. In a letter to Cadell from April 1803 Cunningham recommends Raeburn as the best artist to produce a new image of the late poet.
With the Nasmyth original in front of him, Raeburn worked on the canvas through the summer of 1803. But did Raeburn know Burns? Had they met in the company of their mutual friend Cunningham? Raeburn painted any number of Burns’ friends, including Cunningham himself. But whether the poet and painter met remains an unanswered question.
By permission of the National Galleries of Scotland
Once completed, Raeburn shipped the portrait of Burns to London. Cadell paid twenty guineas, Raeburn’s standard price for a half-length, near life-sized portrait. It was, we can imagine, no mere copy but a depiction of Burns recast by Raeburn’s masterly hand in a dynamic, free-flowing style. In terms of size, four canvases of Nasmyth would fit in the one by Raeburn.
From this time forward, Raeburn’s painting of Burns was not seen in public. We can imagine that it hung somewhere in Cadell’s premises until the closure of the firm in 1840. The publisher commissioned artist William Fry to produce an engraving from Raeburn’s portrait for a frontispiece to the new edition, just as Creech had done decades before. Burns’ brother, Gilbert, was not forthcoming with new material, and thus Cadell’s edition was delayed until 1820 when an advertisement announced that Henry Raeburn had painted a portrait of Burns especially for this edition. William Fry’s (1789-1843) original copperplate is in the collection of the National Trust for Scotland in the Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway.
At the 100th anniversary of the poet’s death in 1896, the Cult of Burns – “Bardolatry” itself – reached a frenzy. Public exhibitions displayed the Bard’s literary and other remains: his manuscripts, Kilmarnock editions, his walking sticks, furniture and drinking cups. All things clearly and conjecturally Burns were put on show to celebrate the man whose poems and songs so eloquently, so compellingly expressed the range of human emotion and action and the beauty and fragility of the natural world we inhabit.
But where was the Raeburn portrait, described by more than one Burnsian as Scotland’s greatest poet painted by Scotland’s greatest portrait painter? This question could not be answered. There were extensive enquiries, newspaper advertisements, searches through public and private collections. All to no avail.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, well known not only for his sleuthing detective but for his interest in matters spiritual, took a keen interest. In the International Psychic Gazette (Nov. 1926) he reported of a séance – a séance conducted by Burns fanatic Edward Barrington Nash – to seek out through a psychic medium the location of the lost Raeburn portrait.
Imagine the scene: a darkened room; figures around a table. After several tense moments contact is made with the spirit of Robert Burns. Speaking through the medium, the poet directs Nash to a London shop where he is told the portrait will be found. Then the bardic spirit disipates; the lights come up. Nash rushes out to the shop; he buys a canvas with an image of Burns. But is it the long-lost Raeburn portrait? Alas, it is not. Nor were any of a number of other portraits of Burns in years to come bought in shops and auctions and brought, like Nash’s, to experts for authentication.
Our story now jumps to late March 2025. I had received a text from a friend referring me to an upcoming house clearance sale at Wimbledon Auctions, including a portrait thought to be of Burns. I paid little attention. The estimate, £300-£500, was the price one might pay for a tawdy copy of the Nasmyth. The ones I had were quite enough. A week later, another friend sent a similar text. Curiosity got the best of me. I clicked on the link: ‘Lot 100: Robert Burns in the manner of Raeburn’.
I sought the advice of Duncan Thompson, the retired director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and a Raeburn expert. At first Duncan was cautious. What could really be seen on an iPhone? And there were layers of varnish and grime which had darkened the surface of the canvas, making the painterly detail, the artist’s free-flowing confident brush work, difficult to discern. Moreover, Raeburn’s style was often copied.
I spoke to Annie Lyden, the Director General of the National Galleries of Scotland, whose curators were not aware of the painting in this Wimbledon Auctions house-clearance sale. Of course, I would not compete had they been in pursuit for the National Collection. A trusted friend, long in the art world, urged caution. “I really feel that you must see it before going any further. This could be a lot of money for a speculation which may be accepted by some (but not all) scholars.” But now there was no time. As I said, it was Friday evening and the sale was in just three days.
Monday morning arrived. I had arranged a telephone bid while watching the online sale on my computer. The auction began. Household furniture and crockery were selling for 20, 30, £40; paintings, some knocked down for less, some for as much as 90 or £100.
Finally: Lot 100: ‘Robert Burns in the Manner of Raeburn’ – estimate £300-£500. The bidding quickly jumped to ten times the estimate. I felt equally nervous and determined. Phone in hand, I kept bidding and bidding and bidding. Whatever the risk, I had to bring this painting home … to Scotland. Nine and a half minutes later, a very long time in a tense auction room: ‘Going once, going twice, going three times….’ [SOLD!].
Could it be that the lost painting of Scotland’s greatest poet by Scotland’s greatest portrait painter was coming home after 222 years? Fast forward to the cleaning and restoration in London at Simon Gillespie Studio.
Fast forward to the shipping to Edinburgh, the revolving door of Raeburn experts coming to BHLM to inspect the portrait. Fast forward to 91-year-old Duncan Thomson: ‘Bill, I have been waiting seventy years to see this painting. In every stroke of the brush, Duncan could ‘read’ what he called Raeburn’s ‘handwriting’ – the artist’s vivid depiction of the personality, literary genius, the immortality of Burns. Looking at the painting, Duncan felt confident that Raeburn had known Burns, had seen him in the flesh and painted that memory. ‘It’s all there, Bill, Duncan declared. It’s all there’.
This painting, now fully authenticated, is on show at the National Gallery of Scotland on the Mound. It will hang beside the original Nasmyth. For the first time since the two paintings were in Raeburn’s studio in Edinburgh in 1803 they will be seen together. Raeburn’s Burns might be described as a copy. But this is not to diminish its significance. For it is a depiction of Scotland’s National Poet rendered by the hand of a master – a gifted artist who took Burns and all that he meant to literature, to Scotland, and the world, to a new and transcendent level.
And now we enter a new era as we imagine and re-imagine Burns. From that most unpromising location in came a depiction of the poet the likes of which we have never seen before. Thinking about the Immortal Memories that will be proposed at Burns Suppers in Scotland and around the world, this portrait, could be regarded as the new Immortal Visual Memory of Scotland’s National Bard.
