More clues from Canongate Kirk further connect a French painter to the Skating Minister, writes Phil Miller

They are two names, written in fading ink in an obscure book of church accounts more than 200 years old.

But these two French names in the records of the Canongate Kirk, dating from the late 1790s, may prove to be another clue to finding the real artist behind one of Scotland's most famous paintings.

Three years ago, The Herald revealed that one of the nation's most iconic paintings, The Rev Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, otherwise known as the Skating Minister, may not have been painted by the great Scottish portrait painter Sir Henry Raeburn after all, and instead could be the work of a French emigre court painter, Henri-Pierre Danloux.

Controversial research by Stephen Lloyd, a senior curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, published in the respected Burlington Magazine, suggested that Danloux, not Raeburn, painted the famous image, which hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Danloux, who lived from 1753 to 1809, resided in Edinburgh, off and on, between 1796 and 1800, where he worked for the exiled French court and its followers who had fled to Britain after the French Revolution and were based in part of the palace of Holyrood.

Danloux painted many members of that exiled court, as well as leading members of the Scottish aristocracy, during his time in Britain.

At the same time as French emigres including Danloux and his wife were living in Edinburgh, the Rev Robert Walker was the senior minister to the kirk of the Canongate in the Old Town of Edinburgh, the parish of which included the palace of Holyrood.

It is not known exactly how many French emigres stayed in Edinburgh after the French Revolution, but The Herald has discovered a tantalising link between these French refugees and the Rev Walker following a thorough search of the records of the Canongate Kirk, which lie in The National Archives of Scotland.

In the Kirk accounts of 1798 and 1799 - the period when the Rev Walker was in his position and that during which experts agree the Skating Minister was painted - two rogue French names appear in the accounts of money going in and out of the church coffers.

In October 1798, alongside Scottish names such as Mary Dowie, Amos Campbell and Ann McLeod, a certain Justina Fontonellies or Fontonelles is recorded as giving money to the Kirk. She donated two shillings and six for warrants, and three shillings and six for another payment, which may be related to property.

In August 1799, again among native names such as Mary Buckle, David Lothian and Hugh Mathison, is another French name, this time a certain Augustus Delelas, who paid a total of three shillings to the church.

It is clear that Rev Walker's parish had direct dealings with the French emigre community in the capital, and indeed was receiving money from them for various services provided by his church.

Dr Stephen Lloyd said that the discovery of the financial link between the above people - if you assume they were French - and the church run by Rev Walker adds "another piece to the jigsaw" of the mystery surrounding the painting.

Ms Fontonelles and Mr Delelas may have been servants or otherwise connected to the exiled French court.

"This is very interesting, even though it is a small piece of evidence," he said. "It's another part of the jigsaw in understanding the context of the French court in exile in the late 1790s, and clearly it is interesting in terms of the Rev Walker's links to Holyrood and the responsibilities of his parish."

The two names are the only possible hint of a link between Rev Walker and Danloux in the Canongate Kirk records.

There is no mention of the painting of Rev Walker in any of the Canongate records searched by The Herald. Nor is there any reference to the painting in Robert Walker's will of 1798, and Danloux's own journals do not cover the period from October 1797 to June 1800.

The painting itself - which the National Galleries still, on balance, believe is by Henry Raeburn - is not signed or dated, but it is generally agreed to have been painted in 1798 or 1799. There are great gaps in its history - it only came to life in public in 1949, when it was bought for the National Gallery of Scotland.

The suggestion that the painting was not a Raeburn caused much controversy, and was vigorously opposed by Duncan Thomson, former head of the portrait gallery and the leading expert on Raeburn.

However, it is known that Danloux made several prolonged visits to Edinburgh in the 1790s. He was an orphan who was raised by his uncle and became a draughtsman and a painter. Settling in Lyon in 1783, he established himself as a painter before moving to Paris in 1785, where his reputation grew as a portraitist to the aristocracy.

However, the French Revolution forced him to flee to London. Danloux first arrived in Edinburgh in September 1796, spending four or five months in lodgings near Holyrood.

At first, he travelled there to paint portraits of members of the emigre French royal family - Charles-Philippe, later to be Charles X of France, was exiled in the debtors' sanctuary of the palace of Holyrood between 1796 and 1803.

Danloux was back in Edinburgh in December 1797, when he advertised his visit in the Edinburgh Evening Courant. He was also in the capital in 1799 and his wife stayed there in 1800, selling his prints. During these visits, he painted small oil portraits of the future king as well as his two sons.

Danloux was warmly welcomed by Edinburgh high society and painted several members of the upper classes: his famous portrait of Admiral Adam Duncan at the Battle of Camperdown hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

He also became closely associated with the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, one of the most powerful and influential aristocrats in Scotland, who commissioned Danloux to paint his family in the gardens of Dalkeith House, south east of Edinburgh.

The Rev Walker was an active member of Edinburgh society and was a fierce patriot during the Revolutionary period and the following Napoleonic wars, delivering several highly patriotic sermons which he went on to have published.

Given that Danloux was also painting works that celebrated British victories over the French, including his large portrait of Admiral Duncan, it may have been that Walker and Danloux met whilst mixing in the same establishment circles.

When Robert Walker died in 1808, aged 53, the painting of him serenely skating on the loch became the property of his widow, Jean Fraser.

Eventually it passed down the family tree until his great granddaughter, Beatrix Scott, who lived in Hampshire, put it up for sale at Christie's in 1914, hoping to sell it for 1000 guineas. It failed to find a buyer.

In 1926, Ms Scott sold it to a Miss Hume of Bournemouth for £700.

More than 20 years later, in 1949, it was presented for sale again at Christie's, and there it was spotted by Ellis Waterhouse, the then director of the National Gallery of Scotland, who bought the painting for Scotland for £525.