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

    Retford, Kate (2014) ‘The small Domestic & conversation style’: David Allan and Scottish portraiture in the Late Eighteenth Century. Visual Culture in Britain 15 (1), pp. 1-27. ISSN 1471-4787.

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    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.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): David Allan (1744–96), John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl (1755–1830), Sir James Grant of Grant (1738–1811), conversation piece, portraiture, Scotland, eighteenth century
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Research Centres and Institutes: Gender and Sexuality, Birkbeck (BiGS), Social Research, Birkbeck Institute for (BISR)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 02 Apr 2014 14:48
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:10
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/9514

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