Charles Edward Stuart, 1799 - 1880. Alias Charles Stuart Hay Allan; brother of John Sobieski Stuart [b]
About this artwork
King George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822 made Highland dress increasingly popular. This led to a growing fascination with the tartan cloth used to make it. While modern scholars reject the idea that specific tartans were originally associated with particular clans, the idea seems to have had irresistible appeal in late Georgian and Victorian Scotland. No one played a greater role in shaping these views than the Sobieski Stuart brothers, imposters who claimed to be legitimate grandsons of Charles Edward Stuart. Their pretence was widely believed, and was accompanied by a similarly remarkable claim: that they had discovered a lost 15th century manuscript describing the traditional dress of the ancient Scottish clans. Sir Walter Scott immediately detected the fraud, but failed to stop them publishing a lavish 'transcription' of the manuscript. Taken to be authoritative by many readers, the Stuart brothers' Vestiarum Scoticum established the basic pattern of clan tartans that is still used today.
Updated before 2020
see media-
artists:
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title:Charles Edward Stuart, 1799 - 1880. Alias Charles Stuart Hay Allan; brother of John Sobieski Stuart [b]
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date created:1843 - 1847
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materials:Salted paper print
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measurements:14.50 x 20.20 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Bequeathed by James Brownlee Hunter, 1928
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accession number:PGP HA 2170
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gallery:
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...