the Short Modern Kilt

[James Hood]

Thank you, OC Richard!

Any idea how the unknown copyist-painter got (sold?) the demi-forgery across the codfish pond and into the museum?

"Fascinating...." (Lt. Cdr. Spock, Stardate 3150.10)

[OC Richard]

Thank you, OC Richard!

Any idea how the unknown copyist-painter got (sold?) the demi-forgery across the codfish pond and into the museum?

How the original ended up in Los Angeles I have no idea.

About the copy, I don't think it's a forgery per se, but a copy. It's not the only copy, when my wife and I were travelling around Scotland in 1986 we saw one in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and other one hanging in one of the castles we toured.

Such copies were fairly common. Let's say you're a wealthy aristocrat in the 18th century and you want a lovely life-size full-length portrait of yourself. You hire one of the best portraitists of the time, John Singleton Copley, who does a superb job. He should! He's very expensive.

But Copley has finished your painting and gone on his way and you're left with ONE huge lovely painting but you have THREE huge lovely residences! So you hire a copyist to make two more.

These copyists are decent artists, but nowhere near the level of a Copley. They can do a quite good job of copying, it's their livelihood, they ought to be good at it.

The problem arises when the owner decides he wants something changed, in this case having the sword pointing a different direction. Copley had the person standing in front of him and could get the anatomy of the hand and arm exactly right, the copyist does not. In this case the result is particularly crude and unconvincing, the hand having no anatomy at all, but being a huge pink blob. The arm is bizarre, evidently made of three sections, requiring two elbows.

There is absolutely no way that this is the work of a top artist like Copley.

And the face is bad too, I didn't even get into that!

In any case, I have older UK-printed books which reproduced the Scottish-held copy, listed either as "by an unknown artist" or "after Copley" recognising that it was a copy of a Copley original. This is correct attribution.

What I don't understand is why NMS now claims that the copy was painted by Copley.

The arm, hand, and sword. (What happened to his cuff?)

[figheadair]

How the original ended up in Los Angeles I have no idea.

The arm, hand, and sword. (What happened to his cuff?)

Richard,

As discussed elsewhere, the version now at the Los Angeles Museum of Art was sold in 1967 by a descendant of Montgomerie’s daughter. The version at the Scottish National Gallery, sold at the Eglinton Collection sale in 1922. So, both have family provenance and so both could well be by Copley.

Here is a better image of the the cuff from the SNG version. I looks much closer in quality to the LA version.