Two portraits by William Mosman

[figheadair]

We know that 18th century artists often painted sitters' facial details onto a pre-painted background. Richard Waitt, he of the Grant portraits, was known for pre-painting much of the detail of his portraits. Allan Ramsay on the other hand had another artist complete the clothing and other details after he'd painted the faces.

Little study has been done into the Highland portraits by William Mosman, some of which are only attributed to him, probably because painting Jacobites during the '45 era was fraught with all sorts of professional and personal difficulties. His portrait of James Moray, Yr of Abercairney is less well known that many but the similarity of the figure to that of the elder of the MacDonald Boys is obvious. I have flipped the Moray portrait for ease of comparison. They both date to c1750 but one must obviously pre-date the other and was probably used as the template for the second. It raises the intriguing question of the reliability of any of the tartans shown as no contemporary example of any of them is known to survive although there are a number of surviving artefacts that are similar to some of those depicted.