The Highlanders of Scotland

[HarborSpringsPiper]

Try this one. http://www.imagekind.com/GalleryProf...adf0879287&P=1

[CMcG]

Awesome, what bounty! I've been collecting those watercolours as I come across them but it is great to see them all together.

[mull]

Great link. I was going to say it was the best resource I have found yet, but clearly, you, my fellow X-markers have that distinction.
You're fast too.

Thanks,
Joe

[mull]

So on to the next question.

In reviewing the pictures I notice Archibald MacIntosh is wearing a vest that appears more like a sleeveless coat. It looks longer than the other vests and has piping on the lower pockets, almost tashlike. He is also wearing his belt over it like it was a doublet. The buttons on it also seem to go off up the right side instead of being centered.


Can anyone tell me more about this garment? Am I just looking at it too hard?

Thanks,
Joe

[M. A. C. Newsome]

So on to the next question.

In reviewing the pictures I notice Archibald MacIntosh is wearing a vest that appears more like a sleeveless coat. It looks longer than the other vests and has piping on the lower pockets, almost tashlike. He is also wearing his belt over it like it was a doublet. The buttons on it also seem to go off up the right side instead of being centered.


Can anyone tell me more about this garment? Am I just looking at it too hard?

Thanks,
Joe

Observations seem to be spot on -- and he seems to also be wearing a cravat in his tartan, most likely in silk, if I had to guess.

If you look underneath the doublet of the gentleman next to him, it would seem as if he were wearing a similarly styled waistcoat.

[OC Richard]

As a big historic Highland Dress fanatic, I just had to have this book. Two copies now: one went fairly cheaply on Ebay a few weeks ago and I couldn't resist.

The full title etc

The Highlanders Of Scotland
The Complete Watercolours Commissioned by Queen Victoria from Kenneth MacLeay
1986 Haggerston Press London

Spending a lot of time closely examining the portraits was fascinating and challenged many of my long-held beliefs about Highland Dress.

In my historian/anal/OCD way, I catalogued what the 56 kilted figures and wearing. Keep in mind that only four are wearing military uniform.

Sporrans:
46 long hair (goat/horse) (including 16 being worn with tweed day jackets)
5 animal mask (badger, racoon, musquash?)
2 with large fur bodies like the animal mask, but lacking the face
1 antique 18th century (the only leather sporran in evidence)
1 antique c1810
1 no sporran
(no sporrans corresponding to our modern day wear leather pocket w/flap, no sporrans quite like our modern evening dress sporran)

Footwear:
25 mary jane style (only 15 have buckles both above and below the opening as is common today)
11 ghillie style (all tan, brown, or grey save for one in black, bearing buckles)
10 ordinary shoes
5 buckle loafers
3 ankle boots
1 spats
1 unique shoe halfway between mary janes and ghillies

Jackets:
24 "celtic" jackets (open collars and lapels, Inverness tashes, Argyll cuffs)
21 day jackets
4 with open collars and lapels, Argyll cuffs, cutaway bottom
3 military style doublets
2 shell jackets
2 "Harris men" in distinctive buttonless jackets
(no Prince Charlies, Montrose doublets, etc)

Headwear:
25 plain glengarries
22 plain balmorals
3 diced balmorals (one diced as modern ones, one with one-row dicing, one with tiny intricate 3-row dicing)
(no diced glens)

Hose:
24 diced (three have plain turnover cuffs)
13 tartan
11 self-coloured (taupe, grey, charcoal)
1 knit with deerhead pattern in green and red

Flashes:
40 with no flashes
5 red
3 red with elaborate bow
1 red bow
1 red garters tied over cuffs of hose
2 red with contrasting edging
1 red & green striped
1 red/green/white striped
1 possibly Royal Stuart tartan, or perhaps striped

Waistbelts:
(of figures wearing unbuttoned jackets, with vests)
16 no visible waistbelts
8 belts over jacket and vest
2 over vest, under jacket
1 over vest, no jacket
(no vests tucked into kilts, no belts peeking out from under vests)
31 waistbelts supporting dirks
3 waistbelts without dirks

Crossbelts: all but two are supporting swords

Cap Badges:
25 glens w/visible badges
22 balmorals w/visible badges
1 glen without badge or cockade
3 balmorals without badge

Kilt Pins (where that part of the kilt is visible)
27 kilts with no kilt pins
5 kilts with pins
1 kilt with rosettes

Weaponry:
32 dirks
28 basket hilt swords
17 sginean
5 targes
4 powder horns
4 pikes
3 shotguns
2 pairs of Highland pistols
1 rifle with bayonet
1 antique 18th century claymore

Plaids:
25 long
8 belted
7 loosely wrapped blanketlike plaids worn without brooch
(33 total plaid brooches)

[OC Richard]

Here are some of the lads:



John Grant and John Fraser
Here are what I call "buckle loafers", and the typical brown ghillies. Note the contrasting turnover cuffs, more like modern breek socks. A waistbelt is worn under the jacket but over the waistcoat. Mr Grant is unusually well equiped, having a pair of pistols, a powder horn, and a sgian.



Kenneth MacKenzie and Thomas MacKenzie
Here are more typical figures, showing the wearing of long hair sporrans with quite plain day jackets. Once more we have a waistbelt worn over the waistcoat supporting a dirk. Note that the bottom waistcoat button is buttoned even when one or more of the higher buttons are open. Note the common lack of flashes. Kenneth is wearing a very interesting style of shoe, halfway between ghillies and mary janes. Those socks with the knit deerhead motif are fantastic.



John MacLachlan, Hugh Graham, James MacFarlane, and Angus Colquhoun
More long hair sporrans with plain jackets. Ghillies of odd greyish tan leather. An antique 18th century sporran, or perhaps a replica of same. Fish jacket closures. No flashes.




Robert MacNab and Donald MacNaghton
The only tartan jacket to be seen. Interesting hose, neither diced nor tartan, but with lines only. Sleeve braid not unlike that of many American Civil War jackets.





John Robertson and John Stewart
An example of just how plainly some of the men are dressed. No badges, buckles, weaponry, or indeed any metalwork at all, and the plainest possible jackets. These men represent the counterargument that The Highlanders of Scotland is portraying only men in absurd high Victorian finery- nothing could be further from the case. Highland dress couldn't be more plain, save for the sporrans: evidently our modern "day" sporrans didn't exist at that time.



Neil MacLeod and Murdoch MacNeill
More "buckle loafers". Diced hose with plain turnover cuffs. One of the very few kilt pins to be seen, apparently simply a second cap badge. Interesting badger sporran with two long tails, not the short tails more commonly seen on animal mask sporrans. The "celtic" style jacket, which is worn both open showing waistcoat and buttoned up, is nicely seen (with a bit of the red waistcoat peeking out). Again we see quite plain dress on display in the case of Mr MacNeill.



Farquhar MacDonald and Lachlan MacDonald
More "celtic" jackets, this time worn open showing waistcoat. Waistbelts were commonly worn either over or under the jacket. Interesting that al their leatherwork is tan, including the sporran cantles and dirk sheaths. Interesting dirks with knife and fork side by side. More tan ghillies- only one pair of the 11 are black. Interesing small balmorals. (Only 7 of the 22 plain balmorals are shaped like today's, the remainder are somewhat smaller, some approaching the look of a pillbox hat.)

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Look even closer and you will note that he's wearing a double breasted doublet...

[HarborSpringsPiper]

So on to the next question.

In reviewing the pictures I notice Archibald MacIntosh is wearing a vest that appears more like a sleeveless coat. It looks longer than the other vests and has piping on the lower pockets, almost tashlike. He is also wearing his belt over it like it was a doublet. The buttons on it also seem to go off up the right side instead of being centered.


Can anyone tell me more about this garment? Am I just looking at it too hard?

Thanks,
Joe

Good observations and I confess, the type of detail I often overlook. My first thought is this mostly represents a late 18th century/early 19th century waistcoat. The thing that strikes me most about this is that it has a lower or more open collar than I associate with that era of waistcoat. The pocket flaps are certainly consistent with that type of waistcoat. I see what you are saying about them being "tache like", but I (rightly or wrongly) would reserve the term tache to refer to a pocket/flap that hung below the waistline, not a pocket flap like this. I absolutely agree with you that this is longer and more like a "sleeeveles coat" than what we would think of as a vest (in American parlance, anyway) that certainly became standard by the mid-19th century.

Now we come to the "buttons on it also seem to go off up the right side instead of being centered" observation you made, which is an excellent pick-up IMHO. This is one of those areas that I believe MacLeay deviated from the actual "picture" if you follow my drift. I suppose I first must acknowledge that these prints are mostly accepted to be the next best things to actual photographs and there's no denying that he paid attention to an immense amount of detail on the whole. I think that what we are really seeing is indeed a waistcoat that buttoned close to the neck and we are left with somewhat of an illusion by how the waistcoat seems to be "done-up" but MacLeay still drew the buttons in place as it was not buttoned up completely. I could be totally wrong but I'm not sure how else to logically explain what we see.

I surmise that the odd pair of hose with "lines" that Richard pointed out above is a similarly less than accurate portrayal of that particular gent's hose. I know for some this is tantamout to heresy, but I think all artists take a little license now and again.

[Jock Scot]

Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, please get your heads out of the clouds! These pictures, interesting though they may be, bare no relation whatsoever to what was worn on a day to day basis. These pictures are fantasy, a dream and dare I say it, lies. Somewhere, lost I expect, there is a picture of me in my youth, sat on a horse in a damned uncomfortable uniform with sword drawn. Now if, in a hundred years time that picture resurfaces and some one looks at it and says gosh "this is the British Army going into action in 1960, this is proof of how they did it and what they wore". Wrong conclusions could be drawn, just as I fear some are doing with those kilted pictures.

Most certainly enjoy the pictures, most certainly glean what information from the pictures that you can about aspects of clothing etc.,but please don't fall into the trap of thinking that any Scot wore that as normal dress.

Those outfits were the very best that very few could muster, plus a large dose of artistic licence, for a very specific event. A pose. Just like the fellow on a horse in his best uniform with his sword.