Past Exhibition: Raeburn's The Rev. Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch

In another of its ongoing series of single-picture exhibitions, The Frick Collection presented Raeburn's celebrated skating minister on loan from the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. Completed by Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) around 1784, this image of the Rev. Robert Walker — minister of the Canongate Kirk and an avid member of the Skating Society — is one of the Gallery's most beloved works. The graceful figure elegantly clad in black and silhouetted against a luminescent, late afternoon sky effectively conveys the subject's sense of pleasure and ease in his solitary activity. The painting was displayed in the Library with other examples of Raeburn's work from The Frick Collection.