Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

Following the immense success of Scott’s narrative poems, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808), his publisher Archibald Constable commissioned a portrait to meet public hunger for an image of the writer. Sir Henry Raeburn’s much-reproduced likeness, engraved here by John Horsburgh, shows a meditative Scott at one with the Borders landscape that he celebrates in his early works. In the background can be seen the hills of Liddesdale and Hermitage Castle, which are both featured in Marmion.

University of Edinburgh, Corson Collection: Coll-1022/CCWS/ILL/P.6113