spent some time face to face with history today

[OC Richard]

Today I had to take my daughter to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (or LACMA as we call it) and inevitably I thought of the wonderful huge portrait of Hugh Montgomery which used to hang there. I couldn't find it last time and was quite disappointed, as it's one of the finest 18th century portraits showing Highland Dress.

I talked to the guy behind the counter in the bookshop and he looked it up... yes it was still in the museum collection... and yes it was still on display! However it had been moved from the main building to a separate building housing "The Art of the Americas".

Here it is



I spent quite a bit of time studying this magnificent portrait very close-up.

Here's the thread I did a while back which will give the background

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...intings-74907/

I did note that the jacket's facings appear to be blue, not green as has been supposed. They are not green in the slightest! However the central squares in the bonnet's dicing are quite clearly green... hmmm...

The sporran is quite gorgeous and painted with painstaking accuracy, its ornate silver top, the silver bullion tassels, the sealskin body.

For the first time I noticed that he's wearing a silver kilt pin. I didn't know that kilt pins existed at such an early date.

The Black Watch tartan is painted beautifully, with every detail of the sett perfect, and with gorgeous glowing colours, not as dark as we're used to military Black Watch looking, and much more intense than the image above shows.

The silver shoe buckles, the marl turnover cuffs to the diced hose, everything in amazing detail.

The man working there said that the portrait was painted from life, I think he said in Boston, which if true is interesting. The painting is signed and dated 1780. How this important painting ended up in Los Angeles, I have no idea.

What a great thing it was, to stand there and breathe it in!

By the way, the version one constantly sees in books about Highland Dress is an unsigned copy which used to hang in The National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, now the National Museums Scotland.

Here's the copy used as a bookcover. The copy is inferior in every way.



Here is some info about the man (happily the Wiki article uses the original Copley painting)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Mo...rl_of_Eglinton