Bust of Sir John Gordon

Two different accounts of the bust's rediscovery have been promulgated.

In the first, Maxine Smith, then a councillor on Invergordon Community Council, had been trying to find the robes of town's former provosts in the late 1990s. She said that she was told that they were likely to have been stored in a shed in Balintore. According to her account, which has been widely reported, the shed was opened, and the bust of Sir John Gordon was seen to have been propping open an interior door in the shed.^[8]

The second account is that of Colin MacKenzie, a founding member of the Invergordon Museum and the former insurance officer at the Highland Council responsible for taking care of the bust. He stated that "it was not propping open a door when found nor was it found in the alleged shed."^[9] Instead, Mr. MacKenzie maintains that it was "never forgotten" and that the bust had been properly inventoried and stored along with 248 other local museum-related objects in a Locality Office.^[10]

The Ross and Cromarty Heritage site wrote that Charles Pearson, a retired art history teacher, had noticed the bust previously exhibited at a local craft fair and had recognised its significance. Pearson sought to identify the bust by contacting the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum and the Louvre.^[7] Shortly afterwards, the bust featured in a scholarly article as an example of Bouchardon's classicising portraiture of British sitters in Rome.^[11]

Proof of ownership of the bust was sought, and the town's records confirmed that it was purchased by Invergordon Town Council at auction for £5 in 1930 (equivalent to £283 in 2025).^[8] It was valued at £1.4 million by Sotheby's auction house in 2023. A private buyer approached Highland Council with an offer of more than £2.5 million for the bust.^[12][13] Charles Pearson died in 2015 and desired that the bust be given to the National Museum of Scotland.^[7]

In the 2010s Highland Council suggested selling the bust and keeping any resultant funds. The proposal was opposed by Rob Gibson, then the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. Gibson had believed that the bust had been bequeathed in the 1920s to the community of Invergordon.^[12]

In 2016 the bust was included in a major international monographic exhibition of Bouchardon's works, entitled "A Sublime Idea of Beauty".^[14][15] Thus, the bust was exhibited at both the Louvre in Paris and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Former councillor Maxine Smith supported selling the bust to fund projects for the benefit of the local community. The art historian Bendor Grosvenor suggested the bust be loaned to Inverness Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland or the National Museum of Scotland. Art historian Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth said that it was likely to be the only Bouchardon sculpture in Scotland and that rules around the export of significant works of art might prevent its overseas dispersal.^[8]

The bust is being kept in storage by Highland Council.^[12] The Invergordon Common Good Fund would benefit from any sale of the bust.^[12] The potential sale of the bust was placed on hold, pending a UK Minister of Culture decision on whether the sale meets any of the three Waverley Criteria, namely, historical, aesthetic, and scholarly, and whether the export licence should be deferred.^[16][17]

On 9 January 2026, the UK government announced that a temporary export ban would be placed on any sale of the bust, lasting until 8 April 2026 in the first instance.^[18] This announcement was prompted by advice from the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), made up of 11 members, which concluded unanimously that all three Waverley Criteria were met and that the bust represented a work of "outstanding" cultural and historical importance to Britain. The Committee gave an estimated value of the piece as £3.1 million at 2025 prices.^[19][6]