Once-lost Burns portrait goes on display at his former Ayrshire home

A once-lost portrait of the poet Robert Burns has gone on display at his former home in Ayrshire, exactly 230 years after his death.

Henry Raeburn’s “legendary” portrait of Scotland’s national bard had been missing for more than 200 years until it was discovered during a house clearance and sold at auction in 2025.

William Zachs, a Burns scholar and director of Blackie House Library and Museum in Edinburgh, purchased the work in the hope it could be Raeburn’s original.

Experts later confirmed that it was.

The painting was first displayed at the National Galleries Scotland from January 22 before being loaned to the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Burns’ hometown of Alloway.

It is on display there until November 1, as part of the National Trust for Scotland’s (NTS) Portrait of a Poet exhibition.

Philip Long, chief executive of the NTS, said: “The portrait of a poet exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to see this long-lost painting of Scotland’s national poet, created by one of the nation’s most esteemed portraitists, in Burns’ very birthplace and in the context of the trust’s significant collection of Burns manuscripts, archives, and artefacts.

“We are very grateful to William Zachs for his rediscovery of this legendary portrait and to the Blackie House Library and Museum for lending us this important work so it may be finally seen and enjoyed once again.

“Exactly 230 years after his death, it is remarkable that we are still discovering and recovering items related to Burns’ life and continuing to learn more about the fascination with him that began in his own lifetime and which rightly persists to today, given his immense cultural contribution.

“We hope that many people will come to Alloway to see this long-lost portrait of Burns by one of Scotland’s greatest artists in the place where Burns’ life began.”

The painting was commissioned in 1803 by Cadell & Davies publishers.

Six years after Burns’ death on July 21 1796, as his popularity continued to rise, it was a way of refreshing his image on future editions of his works.

It was based on a 1787 portrait of Burns painted by Alexander Nasmyth, which is on display at National Galleries Scotland and over centuries has become the most iconic image of the bard.

In Raeburn’s interpretation, his expressive brushstrokes, atmospheric light, and warm colour palette are considered to have created a more romantic portrait than Nasmyth’s smaller original.

Sarah Beattie, head of curatorial at the NTS, said: “We are so pleased that this special painting will temporarily join the 2,500 items in the largest collection of Burns artefacts and sit less than half a mile from the cottage where the poet was born, and where the first Burns supper was held after his death.”

She explained the exhibition will also feature letters from Henry Raeburn to Cadell & Davies about the painting, and a copy of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, “The Edinburgh Edition”, featuring a copperplate after Nasmyth’s painting by Edinburgh engraver, John Beugo.

Ms Beattie went on: “Burns also sat for Beugo, rather than working solely from the oil painting, and we are displaying a 1787 letter from Burns writing that he was having his ‘Phiz,’ a colloquial term for face, ‘done by an eminent engraver’.

“Although he only lived 37 years, we are piecing together the intricacies of Burns’ life and telling the story of one of Scotland’s most celebrated writers.”