John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885), LLD

Robert Herdman was a Scottish portrait and genre painter who combined religious and historical subjects with portrait commissions from Scottish institutions and patrons. His portrait of 'John Campbell Shairp (1819-1885)' (1886) depicts the Scottish literary critic and poet who had served as Principal of the United College at St Andrews and later as Professor of Poetry at Oxford — one of the most significant Scottish intellectual figures of the mid-Victorian era, whose writings on poetry, culture, and Scottish literature were widely read.

Herdman renders Shairp with the combination of academic competence and personal observation that characterized his best portrait work — the scholar's specific features and intellectual bearing depicted with the directness appropriate to a posthumous portrait commemorating a distinguished academic figure. His handling of the portrait's formal elements reflects the conventions of Scottish academic portraiture within the specific requirements of commemorative commission.