Our speakers in lockdown have broadly responded to questions about who or what makes a hero and how these ideas have been represented by artists. National Galleries of Scotland Curator of Portraiture, Liz Louis has recorded a short talk at home considering James Tassie’s portrait medallions of ‘the great and the good’ of eighteenth-century society.
The National Galleries of Scotland hold the world’s largest collection of works by James Tassie (1735–99) and his nephew William Tassie (1777–1860). Born in Pollokshaws near Glasgow, Tassie set up his shop and studio in London in 1766. He produced exquisite replicas of antique gems and almost five hundred portrait medallions of his contemporaries. Portraits of the wife of a Glasgow West India merchant, an admiral from Dundee, and a particularly fashion-conscious sitter will all help give an insight into the age in which Tassie lived and worked.
