John Gibson Lockhart, 1794 - 1854. Son-in-law and biographer of Scott

Francis Grant's portrait of John Gibson Lockhart of 1850 documents the most important literary journalist and biographer of the early Victorian period. Lockhart was the editor of the Quarterly Review, the most powerful conservative literary journal in Britain, and the author of the massive Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott — the great Romantic biography that defined how subsequent generations understood Scotland's most celebrated novelist. Lockhart was also Scott's son-in-law, which gave his biography both unusual intimacy and unusual access. Grant and Lockhart moved in overlapping Scottish aristocratic and literary circles, making this portrait a document of the cultural world where painting, literature, and social class intersected in mid-Victorian Britain. The National Galleries Scotland's picture is a key image in the visual record of Scottish literary culture.

Grant paints the aging Lockhart with characteristic directness, the face given careful individual observation that captures the intelligence and severity for which the 'Scorpion' — his journalistic nickname — was known. The portrait is formal but not stiff, in a three-quarter format against a plain background. The handling is fluent and assured.