Model for the marble statue now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The work was commissioned in 1824, as the result of a movement initiated in Bombay in 1812 by John Forbes Mitchell of Thainstan, who first came up with the idea to raise funds for a national monument to celebrate the Bard, who had died at Dumfries in 1796. Forbes Mitchell was a Scotsman, Burns enthusiast and merchant of the East India Company who was living and working in India, and in 1812 began a subscription scheme to fund a huge, bronze statue in Edinburgh. The marble statue was unfinished at Flaxman’s death and was completed by his brother-in-law, Thomas Denman. The final work varies from the model in minor details and stands on a square pedestal bearing a relief of Burns seated, crowned by a muse.