Skating
"The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch" (The Skating Minister) by Henry Raeburn (c. 1795) In the possession of The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. I first saw this painting when I was a university student up in Scotland. When killing time before catching trains south or up to Stirling, I would sometimes visit The National Gallery and this rather quirky picture impressed me though I couldn't explain why. He's like a silhouette as he moves effortlessly over the ice. He knows how to skate but he's very nonchalant about it. There's something of a tension between the staid formality of his vocation and the freedom of travelling smoothly over a frozen lake. He appears to cast no shadow. There's a wild and slightly brooding fluidity about the background but Reverend Walker himself is rather statuesque - frozen in that moment. The picture stayed in Robert Walker's family for over a hundred and fifty years...
