Oldest MacDonald sett?

[figheadair]

How do we know what is and isn't artistic licence when so little extant material survives? It's certainly possible that a wealthy lord could have a specific cloth made for sleeves. The child in question is around eight years old and it's possible that the sett used for the jacket wouldn't look as good on the sleeves. The younger boy shows the same sett for torso and sleeves so why would the artist make a mistake (or even just make up) in rendering the sleeves of the older and presumably more important/senior boy?

That of course is true but having had the benefit of studying five surviving '45 era coats and countless portraits and I have seen nothing to support the idea that a different tartan would have been used for the sleeves or any other integral part of a highland coat. In fact, the counter arguement to your 'possibility' is that it would show that an individual could not afford enough of a particular pattern that they had to make do with mixed lots.

In the case of the MacDonald Boys' picture that if the sleeve is compared with the main body of the coat then the patterns align showing that the sleeves are indeed the same sett.



It's also interesting to compare it with that of James Moray, Yr of Abercairney that was almost certainly painted by the same artist using the format, but painting in a different face and the tartans in red and black.



The sett of the elder boy's coat is large and such tartans often proved difficult for artists to capture correctly, especially in small of folded areas of a piece of costume.