National Galleries of Scotland

In February 1692 a company of the Earl of Arygll's regiment was quartered on the Macdonalds of Glencoe. For a week all was friendly but the Macdonalds, strongly Jacobite, were considered to be a threat to the government. Early in the morning of 13 February the soldiers, commanded by Captain Campbell and acting on secret orders, fell on their hosts and slaughtered them on the desolate snow-covered hillsides of Glencoe. For his part in this massacre, the name of Campbell of Glenlyon has become a by-word for treachery. This portrait of a rather nervous-looking young man, with a halo of bright hair, was painted several decades before this notorious event.