Charles Manning Allen or ‘Charles Edward Stuart’, 1799 - 1880
About this artwork
The extraordinary Allen brothers, Charles and John, claimed (falsely) to be the grandsons of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. By 1822 they plunged themselves into traditional Highland life. By the 1830s ‘Charles Edward Stuart’ and ‘John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart’ were presiding over a make-believe royal court on an island in the Beauly River, Inverness-shire. When this photograph was taken they were at the centre of a heated controversy about both the origins of Highland dress and their own ancestry. In 1842 they published what purported to be a sixteenth-century manuscript, the ‘Vestiarium Scoticum’. A related volume, ‘The Costume of the Clans’, appeared two years later. These works, a curious mixture of real scholarship and fantasy, asserted an ancient pedigree for clan tartans.
Updated before 2020
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artists:
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title:Charles Manning Allen or ‘Charles Edward Stuart’, 1799 - 1880
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date created:1843
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materials:Salted paper print
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measurements:14.40 x 21.00 cm
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object type:
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accession number:PGP HA 533
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gallery:
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subject:
David Octavius Hill
David Octavius Hill
A painter and a lithographer by training, David Octavius Hill is best remembered for the beauty of the calotypes he and Robert Adamson produced together. Hill was a sociable and kind-hearted man who did much to support the arts in Scotland and between 1830 and 1836 he was the unpaid Secretary of...