Museum buys portrait

AN HISTORIC painting of a writer who lived in Dumfries and worked with Robert Burns has been purchased for the region.

Dumfries Museum have acquired a portrait of blind 18th century poet and novelist, the Rev Thomas Blacklock, with the work set to go on display in Burns House later this year.

Siobhan Ratchford, of Dumfries Museum, said: “I think it’s quite apoignant painting because you can see that he has a visual impairment -- you can’t really see his eyes; it’s a sideways view.

“You don’t know if it was taken from life, whether he sat for it or whether it was somebody’s memory of him. I think it’s quite a moving painting.”

Blacklock was born in Annan in 1721, the son of a bricklayer, and lost his sight at the age of six months due to smallpox.

His verses attracted the interest of Edinburgh physician John Stevenson, who supported his studies at a grammar school in the capital.

With the Jacobite uprising of 1745, Blacklock returned to Dumfries to live with his sister and her husband.

After a period as Minister at Kirkcudbright, Blacklock married Sarah Johnston, daughter of a Dumfries surgeon, before the couple set up a boarding house in Edinburgh for university students.

Dating from at least 1840, and by an unknown artist, the newly-acquired portrait of Blacklock has been purchased from a private dealer at a cost of £1500 thanks to assistance from the National Fund For Acquisitions.

It will go on display at Burns House later this year, as Blacklock’s support for his work is said to have persuaded the national bard to abandon plans to emigrate to Jamaica -- the men collaborating on a collection of songs and music.”

However, Siobhan said: “Obviously it can be loaned to Annan, but at Burns House we have one of our important paintings on loan to Alloway, so we have a bit of a gap.”



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