The Changing Face of Robert Burns in the Sculpture of David Watson Stevenson (1842–1904)

By the 1870s in Scotland, a second generation of mainly Edinburgh-trained professional sculptors was engaged on a plethora of architectural and monumental projects for a wide range of public and private clients. The growing interest expressed by groups intent on memorialising Robert Burns presented a serious dilemma for them. As if the transition from faltering Neoclassicism to an emerging preference for naturalism and realism was not challenge enough, how were Scottish sculptors to depict Burns, given the public’s unbending preference for Alexander Nasmyth’s idealised first portrait? This essay explores the personal quest of eminent sculptor David Stevenson – across 23 years and five discrete interpretations – to transmute Nasmyth’s Burns into artistically convincing sculptures.