Attributed to Peter Slater, RA

The Collection of James Robert Dickson (1872-1945);

Robert Dicksons Konst- och Antikvitetssamlingar 1945, 1 Kungsportsavenyen 1, Gothenburg, lot 499.

Robert Burns was a pioneer of the romantic movement and an influential Scottish poet of the 18th century. The bust is largely inspired by classical antiquity with classicising facial features, the torso is typically truncated before the shoulders, and he is crowned with a laurel wreath. The use of the wreath, symbolising triumph in Roman antiquity, demonstrates Slater's deep admiration for Burns and his work. A unique element is that the wreath consists of branches of holly, which is reminiscent of the Scottish natural winter landscape. Ingrid Roscoe records a bust of Robert Burns by Peter Slater in her Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain (1660-1851) as untraced and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy of Art.

Peter Slater worked predominantly in Edinburgh and London, where he exhibited regularly in the Royal Academies. He was a renowned portraitist and made various busts of influential Scottish figures, including writers, poets, and scientists. He was commissioned a monument of the inventor and chemist James Watt (1736-1819) in the Herriot-Watt university in Edinburgh.

The provenance of the bust goes back to James Robert Dickson (1872-1945), who was part of the landowning family of Scottish origin who moved to Australia in 1854 where he became a renowned politician and business man. The bust was illustrated in the 1945 auction catalogue of Dickson’s collection.

RELATED LITERATURE

I. Roscoe, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britian, 1660-1851, New Haven and London, 2009, p.1135, no.13; H. Smailes, The Concise Catalogue of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 1990, p.50