They are renovating the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh so the best of the collection has been taken off the walls, shipped to Australia and displayed in Sydney. Its been a while since I stood before the Reverend Robert Walker but it was a shear delight to meet up with him again on the lower floor of the New South Wales Gallery last week. I remember him well and he hasn’t changed a bit.
Henry Reaburn painted him Skating on Duddington Loch on the outskirts of Edinburgh in 1795. Long ago I also skated there although not with the elegance of the good Reverend Walker.
For a painting that is almost all back and white it’s full of colour. Robert Walker dresses conservatively in black as you would expect for a man of the cloth but he wears a fabulous hat. Not just stylish but worn with a slight tilt suggesting that for a man of required moderation he had allowed himself just a pinch of self indulgence. His red cheeks tell us it’s cold yet he is finely dressed rather than rugged up. Robert Waker has a secret desire for style.
The painting presents a static skating pose yet to my eye it is full of the most graceful and refined movement. He glides without effort across the grey winter landscape. The body is light and delicate. Nothing at all like the rugged Scottish paintings of other men of stature of the period. Scottish lairds with their overly expressed masculinity, tartan cloth, sporran to the front and dagger at the hip.
Robert Walker was a founding member of the Scottish Skating Society. For him gentle leisure pursuits could be followed but not overdone. He skates for pleasure yet does not allow himself the opportunity of a smile. Even in a certain self-indulgent pleasure there is to be a stoic earnestness. He is after all a Scottish Presbyterian, a religion that fostered restraint over indulgence to the bitter end of life on this earth for the rewarding pleasures that will follow in the next.
Neighbourhoods of poverty, drunkenness and low life surrounded Robert Waker’s church at Cannon Gate. He seems ever so detached from his potential parishioners in the pursuit of a controlled refined life.
How outrageous then that his skating ties are bright red.
Henry Reaburn painted him Skating on Duddington Loch on the outskirts of Edinburgh in 1795. Long ago I also skated there although not with the elegance of the good Reverend Walker.
For a painting that is almost all back and white it’s full of colour. Robert Walker dresses conservatively in black as you would expect for a man of the cloth but he wears a fabulous hat. Not just stylish but worn with a slight tilt suggesting that for a man of required moderation he had allowed himself just a pinch of self indulgence. His red cheeks tell us it’s cold yet he is finely dressed rather than rugged up. Robert Waker has a secret desire for style.
The painting presents a static skating pose yet to my eye it is full of the most graceful and refined movement. He glides without effort across the grey winter landscape. The body is light and delicate. Nothing at all like the rugged Scottish paintings of other men of stature of the period. Scottish lairds with their overly expressed masculinity, tartan cloth, sporran to the front and dagger at the hip.
Robert Walker was a founding member of the Scottish Skating Society. For him gentle leisure pursuits could be followed but not overdone. He skates for pleasure yet does not allow himself the opportunity of a smile. Even in a certain self-indulgent pleasure there is to be a stoic earnestness. He is after all a Scottish Presbyterian, a religion that fostered restraint over indulgence to the bitter end of life on this earth for the rewarding pleasures that will follow in the next.
Neighbourhoods of poverty, drunkenness and low life surrounded Robert Waker’s church at Cannon Gate. He seems ever so detached from his potential parishioners in the pursuit of a controlled refined life.
How outrageous then that his skating ties are bright red.