Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 49, 2008



 The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, better known by its truncated title The Skating Minister, is an oil painting by Sir Henry Raeburn in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. It was practically unknown until about 1949; today, however, it is one of Scotland's best known paintings. It is considered an icon of Scottish culture, painted during one of the most remarkable periods in the country's history, the Scottish Enlightenment.

The clergyman portrayed in this painting is the Reverend Robert Walker. He was a Church of Scotland minister who was born on April 30, 1755 in Monkton, Ayrshire. As a child, Walker's father had been minister of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam, thus the young Robert almost certainly learnt to skate on the frozen canals of the Netherlands. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Edinburgh in 1770 at the age of fifteen. He married Jean Fraser in 1778 and had five children. He became a member of the Royal Company of Archers in 1779 and their chaplain in 1798.

He was minister of the Canongate Kirk as well as being a member of the Edinburgh Skating Society, the oldest skating club in Britain. They would meet on Duddingston Loch as shown in the painting, or on Lochend loch to its northeast between Edinburgh and Leith, when these lochs were suitably frozen.