Scottish Portraiture 1644-1714: David and John Scougall and their contemporaries

Uittreksel

This book is the first comprehensive publication on Scottish portraiture from the period1644 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 family, which also included the somewhat obscure George Scougall (active c. 1690-1737). 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 most important contemporaries of the Scougalls were the portraitist L. Schüneman (active c. 1655/60-1667 or slightly later), his Scottish successor James Carrudus (active c. 1668-1683 or later), whose work is identified for the first time. An extensive survey of Scottish portraits, with an emphasis on the work of the Scougall painters, is presented for the period 1644 to 1694. Numerous attributions to various artists and sitter identifications have been established or revised. An overview of the subsequent period up to 1714 is provided, in which the oeuvres and biographical details of the principal portrait painters are highlighted. Countless paintings have been photographed anew or for the first time, and have been compared in detail, which had barely 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 paint-ers in Scotland from this period, as this book shows, now form a solid bridge between the works from c. 1575 till the death of George Jamesone in 1644, and the portraits by the renowned Scottish painters of the eighteenth century--4e de couv.