‘The small Domestic & conversation style’: David Allan and Scottish Portraiture in the Late Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This article focuses on two conversation pieces by the eighteenth-century Scottish artist David Allan: The Family of the 4th Duke of Atholl (1780) and Sir James Grant (1785). One of the most vital characteristics of the conversation piece was its delineation of customary detail: the ‘mode & manner of the time & habits’, to use George Vertue’s phrase. These paintings feature detailed description of Highland costume, Highland custom and Highland country – and, in so doing, provide invaluable insights into the rapidly evolving, increasingly romanticized image of the Highlands in the later eighteenth century. They offer distinct views into the changing connotations of tartan and Highland custom in the decades following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, the place of these cultural nationalist signs within the ‘concentric loyalties’ of Scots in this period and the relationship between Highlandism and values associated with the Union.