Sorry to continue this waistcoat sidetrack, but I thought I came across something somewhere about regiments with buff facings wearing buff waistcoats rather than white? Don't remember.
About John Singleton Copley having access to various uniform items, I would think that Hugh Montgomerie would arrive dressed for his portrait in the clothes he wanted to be painted in.
Clothes conform to the body and hang in a specific unique way, and you can't paint a sitter wearing one outfit and stick on another, like a cut-out paper doll. It would be obvious and look bad.
What a portrait painter can do, and I've done it myself, is do head studies of the subject but paint the body from a model wearing the outfit the subject wants. It's tricky to do well; the model has to have the same body as the portrait subject, and you have to get the pose and the lighting exactly the same.
Is there evidence that this was done with the Hugh Montgomerie portrait? More common, easier, and giving better results would be for the subject to be dressed in the clothes he will wear in the final painting.
Last edited by OC Richard; 2nd October 19 at 05:28 AM.
Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte
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