[BITList] Slicker, quicker vicar

[John Feltham]

To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2010-04-30



Walker,  Robert  [called  the Skating Minister]  (1755-1808), Church of Scotland minister and subject of a painting by Henry Raeburn, was born on 30 April 1755 at Monkton, Ayrshire, the second son of the Revd William Walker (1719-1774), minister of that parish, and Susanna, nee Sturment, widow of Thomas Latimer, a Virginian merchant. In 1760 William Walker was translated to the Scottish church at Rotterdam, where no doubt the young Robert learned to skate. Following his mother's death, Robert's father married Elizabeth Lawson, widow of William Robertson, merchant of Rotterdam.

Robert Walker returned to Scotland and on 24 April 1770 was licensed to preach, at the unusually early age of fifteen, by the presbytery of Edinburgh. It was not until 27 November 1776 that he was ordained to the charge of Cramond, near Edinburgh, to which he was presented by Willielma, Lady Glenorchy. On 19 August 1784 he was called to the first charge of the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh. He remained there for his entire career with what was then a good stipend. Clearly a popular and sociable man, in 1779 he was elected a member of the Royal Company of Archers and was appointed their chaplain in 1798. In January of the following year he joined Edinburgh's Skating Society and in 1784 his name first appears in the minute book of the Wagering Club.

On 8 May 1778 Walker married Jean (d. 1831), daughter of John Fraser of Borlum, writer to the signet, and his wife, Jean, nee Brown. The couple had two daughters and three sons. During his career Walker published a modest number of works, including a collection of Sermons (1791), along with a further three sermons which appeared individually, his Observations on the national character of the Dutch and the family character of the house of Orange and The Psalms of David Methodized (both 1794). He also contributed a description on the Dutch table game of kolf to John Sinclair's Statistical Account (vol. 16).

Walker's celebrity rests today on his being the subject of Henry Raeburn's The Skating Minister, though it is not known how the two men met. Considerable debate has surrounded the dating and attribution of the work, and the identity of the skater. Formerly identified as one of Raeburn's earlier works (claimed by the sitter's family to have been completed in 1784), it is now regarded as a product of the experimentation and intense activity that followed the artist's return from Rome in 1786, which would date the portrait to the early 1790s. The Skating Minister was privately owned until 1949, when it was purchased by the National Gallery of Scotland. Walker's portrait continues to attract considerable interest among scholars and the public, and is now one of Raeburn's most popular and best-known works. Walker died in Edinburgh on 13 June 1808. By his will, of which Raeburn was a trustee, he left all his movable goods to his eldest son, John; no mention of skates appears in the bequest.

David Mackie 

Sources  D. Mackie, 'Raeburn: life and art', PhD diss., U. Edin., 1994 + D. Thomson, 'Raeburn': the art of Sir Henry Raeburn, 1756-1823 (1997) [exhibition catalogue, Royal Scot. Acad., 1 Aug 1997 - 5 Oct 1997, and NPG, 24 Oct 1997 - 1 Feb 1998] + Fasti Scot., new edn, vol. 3 + C. Thompson and H. Brigstocke, Shorter catalogue: National Gallery of Scotland, 2nd edn (1978) + Raeburn bi-centenary exhibition, Arts Council, Scottish Committee (1956) [exhibition catalogue, NG Scot., 16 July - 16 Sept 1956] + A. G. Pearson, 'Gilbert Stuart's The skater (Portrait of William Grant) and Henry Raeburn's The Reverend Robert Walker DD, skating on Duddingston Loch: a study of sources', Rutgers Art Review, 8 (1987), 55-70 + [F. J. Grant], A history of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet (1890) + will, NA Scot., register of deeds, RD 3/327, fols. 773-86 + private information (2004) [S. Lloyd, Scot. NPG]
Archives NL Scot., Edinburgh Skating Society collection
Likenesses  H. Raeburn, oils, c.1792-1794, NG Scot. [see illus.]