Walker was born in
Monkton in
Ayrshire, the son of William Walker, minister of the
Scots Church in
Rotterdam. Many of his male relatives were
Church of Scotland ministers: his father was the minister in Monkton; his uncle, also Robert Walker, was minister at
St Giles' Cathedral in
Edinburgh and
Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1771; his grandfather had been minister at
Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh. His mother was the daughter of a merchant from
Virginia. His father became minister of the Scots Church in Rotterdam in 1760, and it is likely that Walker learned to
skate on frozen canals in the Netherlands. After his mother's death in the Netherlands, his father remarried in 1767 to the widow of a Scottish merchant in Rotterdam. Like his father and grandfather, Walker became a Church of Scotland clergyman. He was granted a
licence to preach by the
Presbytery of Edinburgh on 24 April 1770, shortly before his 15th birthday (some sources give his year of birth as 1746 which would put him at 24, a more normal age for ordination).
Willielma Campbell, Lady Glenorchy, presented him as minister of
Cramond, near Edinburgh, in November 1776. He moved to become senior minister at
Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh on 19 August 1784, a parish that includes the
Palace of Holyroodhouse, bringing him to the centre of the Scottish establishment. He remained minister at Canongate until his death in the manse, on 30 June 1808. Raeburn was appointed as one of the nine trustees of his will, along with
Charles Hamilton, 8th Earl of Haddington, and Walker's publisher,
William Creech. He became a member of the
Royal Company of Archers in 1779, and was appointed chaplain of the Company in 1798. He was elected as a member of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1784, and served as chaplain of the
Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce from 1794 to 1807. In 1791 he published a collection of his sermons in 1791 and in 1794 he published a book on the
Psalms of David and also a book of observations on the Dutch. He died in Edinburgh on 30 June 1808. ==The painting==