Highland DRESS use during Proscription

[Tobus]

Clearly kilts with no pleats is a contradiction but a feileadh beag with folds would be closer to what Sandby showed.

The tartan on the bias is obviously nonesense and reflects the difficulty a number of 18th century artists had with depicting tartan. The drawings of the Black Watch mutineers are a good example and their yellow and red tartan bears no resemblance to the Government sett. It may have been the case that th colouring was done later in the same way that it was for the later McIan prints.

What seems less understandable is why Sandby would have shown a feileadh beag and a sparate rolled plaid (much like the army campaign blanket worn by non-Highland soldiers) if the individuals had been wearing a feileadh mor. The style of dress he showed was certainly in use at the time of the '45 as for example, the images from Loevestein Castle attest.

Something else I just noticed is that both the prisoners are shown wearing their plaids over their right shoulders. Unless they both happened to be left-handed (very slim odds of that), wouldn't it have been customary to drape the plaid over their non-dominant (left) shoulders? This detail, while perhaps insignificant, still leads me to wonder about Sandby's accuracy. It would seem obvious that these men were not posing for a portrait, and that he had to paint it from memory of a glimpse in time. But if he got these numerous details wrong about kilts and tartans, one wonders how much "artistic license" he chose to use. It is always tempting to treat historical paintings in the same manner as modern photographs, as if they were accurate down to small details, but I tend to think that these artists were injecting a lot of non-factual information into their works.