It is rare to find a family portrait in such an informal pose, but here we have just such for a Family whose burial lair is at Greyfriars Kirkyard.
Sir James Hunter Blair, (1741 – 1787) was a Scottish banker, landowner and politician, who served as Member of Parliament for Edinburgh from 1780 to 1784 and Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1784 to 1786. As Lord Provost he is best known for commencing the construction of South Bridge, over the Cowgate, which transformed the south side of Edinburgh. Two of the new areas just off South Bridge carry his name, being Hunter Square (around the Tron Kirk) and Blair Street (running down to the Cowgate).
Born in Ayr in 1741, the son of a merchant, in 1756 he was apprenticed to Messrs Coutts, bankers in Edinburgh and in 1763 became a partner in the banking company of Sir William Forbes. After marrying Jean Blair, the daughter and heiress of John Blair of Dunskey in Wigtownshire in 1770, the family name became Hunter Blair when she inherited her father’s estate in 1777. They had 14 children. James died aged just 46 in 1787 after contracting typhus.
Sir James Hunter Blair was a founder member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and welcomed Robert Burns when the poet first arrived in Edinburgh. On his death, Burns composed an elegy, beginning: “he lamp of day, with ill-presaging glare”, and which goes on to extol in a rather ponderous fashion Blair’s public virtues. Burns himself thought it was a rather mediocre piece, but other critics described it in rather more negative terms. The whole elegy is here.
