Robert Michael Ballantyne, by John Ballantyne (1815-1897). c.1855. Oil on canvas. H 64.8 x W 50.8 cm. Collection: National Portrait Gallery. Accession no. 4128, given by Mrs I. McK. Dobson and family, 1959. Reproduced here under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Deed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This is quite a different portrait from the ones that made John Ballantyne's name. Unlike those, which show artists in their studios, it shows his younger brother, only just embarked on his literary career, outdoors amid mountain scenery. This is R.M. Ballantyne the huntsman. According to the National Portrait Gallery's note on the portrait, it was painted "for their friend Willie Bruce.... in memory of the friends' trips to Norway in John Cowan's yacht to fish, shoot and paint."
In particular, it memorialises Ballantyne's shooting of a great Norwegian eagle on a trip to Norway in 1855. The dead eagle's flight feathers can still be seen, slightly extended, on the right, while the bird's great curved beak is visible lower down, close to Ballantyne's thigh. A small red splash below it perhaps indicates its blood, and matches the red of Ballantyne's shirt. Though the hunter's pose is wooden enough, the rifle in his hand, and the unfortunate prey, mark him as every inch a man of action, and indeed Ballantyne was as adventurous as his many boys' stories would suggest.
In his biography of the author, Eric Quayle tells how Ballantyne's earlier Hudson Bay "experience stood him in good stead in the daily competition for the heaviest catch and the other five males in the party soon came to seek his advice on matters of technique. This was especially evident when they took part in an eagle-hunting expedition, which involved climbing some of the less precipitous mountains in what turned out to be a successful attempt to bag a specimen of the king of the birds" (102). The frontispiece of Quayle's book is a photograph taken after the trip, which shows him indoors in a similar pose, but curiously boxed into the corner of a room, and minus the eagle.
Ballantyne was evidently proud of bagging the eagle. He liked to reenact the feat as a dramatic finale to talks he gave on his adventures: he would pick up his rifle and fire a blank at the stuffed eagle suspended over the stage or platform. The string that held it would be loosened so that it seemed to crash down — not something that audiences today would applaud. Later, in his reminiscences of excursions in Norway, he dwelt instead on his prolonged battle to catch a large salmon, before hammering his head in (105-9). Again, not an instance of heroic masculinity that would appeal much now. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
Ballantyne, R.M. An Author's Adventures, or, Personal Reminiscences in Book-Making. London: James Nesbit & Co., 1897. Internet Archive, from a University of Alberta microfilm. Web. 10 September 2025.
Quayle, Eric. Ballantyne the Brave: A Victorian Writer and His Family. Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Dufour Editions, 1967.
Robert Michael Ballantyne. National Portrait Gallery. Web. 7 September 2025.
Created 7 September 2025