A Tale of Two Paintings

[OC Richard]

Open up many a book about Highland Dress and you'll come across this painting



and the caption will say things like

Hugh, 12th Earl of Eglinton (1739-1819). A striking life-size portrait by an unknown artist. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. (from The History of Highland Dress by J Telfer Dunbar)

but also this

Hugh, twelfth Earl of Eglinton, in the uniform of the 42nd Regiment, after Copley. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. (from Tartans by Christian Hesketh)

Ahh.... after Copley... exactly what is being implied?

Well after seeing this painting in person at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh in the 1980s and seeing it in many books, and it having no signature and no date, imagine my surprise when I came across the same painting in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art! It's HUGE.

The difference was, this one was the signed and dated original, signed J. S. Copley 1780.

Here is the signed and dated original on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. You can see that the unknown painter of the copy (in the National Portrait Gallery) changed the sword-arm and the background and is quite obviously an inferior talent when compared to John Singleton Copley himself.



Just a little tidbit of historical information for those who love the study of 18th century portraits of Highland Dress.

BTW Dunbar, not knowing that the painting in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery was a copy, has this to say about it:

Although probably painted some 25 years later, the highly-spirited portrait by an unknown artist of Hugh Montgomerie, 12th Earl of Eglinton (1739-1819) shows, in excellent detail, the uniform worn by him in America.