Dressed to Kill, Dressed to Till
Oil on canvas, 86 x 60 inches, relined and on original stretcher. Unframed. This large and handsome work shows the young family of a dashing officer dressed in the uniform of the East Lothian Yeomanry Cavalry, an elite volunteer corps composed of Scottish aristocrats first raised in 1797. His beautiful wife is seated with their youngest, still an infant, while his eldest daughter gazes directly at the viewer, a rather unconventional approach. She shares her mother’s beauty and that, coupled with what clearly must have been a compelling personality, has clearly captivated the artist. Her portrait stands out among the rest as the central figure. The child playing with her father’s saber is likely her young brother, still dressed in the unisex gown often worn by boys until three or four years of age—the weapon alone serving to identify sex. Note that as the age of the children diminish, so does the detailing of their form and features in this work. During the early 19th century, there was still a likely chance that the baby could die of crib death and infant mortality remained high, even among the elite–perhaps one in three surviving beyond age two. The intent may have been to finish features more fully–if and when such progeny survived beyond the crucial first years. Attributed in 1970 as the work of Alexander Geddes, both the style and manner of execution and the costume of the sitters suggest both a different hand and an earlier sitting date. More recently, this work has been reattributed to Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) and was probably painted c. 1805 (when Geddes had just enrolled at the Royal Academy schools). By size and composition, this would have been an extremely expensive commission—intended to be hung prominently in the great drawing room of some country estate or city mansion. Literature: McKenzie Annand, “An Officer of the East Yeomanry and His Family, JSAHR LII (1974), pp. 66-67 and plate. Provenance: with M. Bernard Fine Art, London to 1970; private collection in the American South to 2011.
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