Robert Burns: People and Places
Robert Burns remains one of Scotland's greatest cultural assets. In the centuries since his death artists, photographers, printers and publishers have generated a vast body of visual material relating to the people, places and events of Robert Burns' life and work.
This selection of images illustrates the people, places and events associated with Robert Burns in the popular culture of Scotland. It includes portraits of his immediate family and descendants, who were themselves transformed into minor celebrities simply because of their heredity; topographic images of the places where he lived or visited, which feature in his writing and which became landmarks - if not places of pilgrimage - for his enthusiasts; the monuments erected to Burns and the events and ceremonies which take place in his memory. It illustrates his contemporary circle of friends and patrons and also those who sought to preserve and promote his position in Scottish culture throughout the last two centuries. The images are drawn from collections of paintings, drawings, engravings and lithographic prints, books, ephemera, postcards, photographic prints, glass plate negatives and magic lantern slides held by Dumfries and Galloway Museums.
These images also serve to illustrate how Robert Burns' growth in popularity reflected the advances being made in reprographic technology and communication throughout the centuries following his death.
