Book Description

This book is the first comprehensive publication on Scottish portraiture from the period 1644 to 1714, with an emphasis on the painters David Scougall (1625-1685), and his son John Scougall (1657-1737). It is based on in-depth art historical and archival research. As such, it is an important academic contribution to this thus far little-researched field. Virtually nothing was known about the Scougall portraitists, who also include the somewhat obscure George Scougall (active c. 1690-1737). Thorough archival research has provided substantial biographical information. It has yielded life dates and data on family relations and, also, it has become clear that David Scougall had two parallel careers, as a portrait painter and as a writer (solicitor). The legal community in which the Scougalls were embedded has been defined, as well as an extended group of sitters and their social, economic, and family networks. The book includes a catalogue raisonne of the oeuvre of David Scougall. The most important contemporaries of the Scougalls were the portraitist L. Schuneman (active c. 1655/60-1667 or slightly later), his successor James Carrudus (active c. 1668-1683 or later), whose work is identified for the first time in this book, David Paton (c. 1650-in or after 1708), Jacob Jacobsz. de Wet (1641/42-1697) and Sir John Baptist Medina (1659-1710). Their lives and work are discussed. An extensive survey of Scottish portraits, with an emphasis on the work of the Scougall painters, is presented for the period 1644 to 1714. Numerous attributions to various artists and sitter identifications have been established or revised. An overview of the next generation is provided, in which the oeuvres and biographical details are highlighted of the principal portrait painters, such as William Aikman (1682-1731), Richard Waitt (1684-1733) and John Alexander (1686-1767). Countless paintings have been photographed anew or for the first time, and have been compared in detail, which had hardly been done before, while information is also included on technical aspects and (original) frames. The resulting data have been complemented by analysing the social and (art-) historical context in which the portraits were made. The works of the portrait painters in Scotland from this period, as this book shows, now form a solid bridge between the portraits painted prior to George Jamesone's death in 1644, and those by the renowned Scottish painters of the eighteenth century.