[3] The painting was included in a 1997 exhibition of Raeburn's work at the National Portrait Gallery, London and was chosen to appear on posters advertising the event which were put on display across the capital.

It reached an even wider audience in 1998 when The Skating Minister was included in an exhibition of British paintings, Pintura británica, at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where images of it were widely reproduced on souvenirs.

When Walker was a child, his father had been the minister of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam, so the young Robert almost certainly learnt to skate on the frozen canals of the Netherlands.

The Reverend skates in the efficient but difficult "travelling position", with both arms folded across his chest, and his stern black outfit contrasts with the wild backdrop of Duddingston Loch.

"[5] Art historian Duncan Thomson notes that, "The filigree within the buckle on the strap at the skater's right knee and the taut complexities of the arrangement of the pink ribbons that binds the skates to his shoes are a reminder of the manipulative skills that Raeburn must have developed during his apprenticeship [as a jeweller and goldsmith] ... perhaps the tour de force of observation and the finding of equivalent forms are the marks that the skater (or those who have circled with him) has made on the ice: the curving grooves incised with some appropriate tool in a liquid, greyish white which has been spread over a darker grey that has been allowed to dry and the edges of these tiny furrows, more pronounced towards the bottom of the picture, tipped in with a purer white to simulate the froth of ice thrown aside by the cutting blade.

"[5] In March 2005, a curator from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery suggested that the painting was by French artist Henri-Pierre Danloux rather than by Henry Raeburn.

[6][7] Despite continuing controversy about its attribution, The Skating Minister was sent to New York City in 2005 to be exhibited in Christie's for Tartan Day, an important Scottish celebration.

In Alexander McCall Smith's novel The Sunday Philosophy Club, a character sends a card bearing Raeburn's picture to the protagonist, Isabel Dalhousie.

[11] Spanish architect Enric Miralles said that his west window panels at the 2004 Scottish Parliament Building invoked the form of The Skating Minister.