The Gosford portrait of Charles Edward Stuart by Ramsay is the only known portrait of Charles to be painted in Britain. It shows the Prince at perhaps the most critical moment of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. Until recently, the picture’s attribution and status were uncertain, not least because the iconography of Charles had become somewhat muddled: a portrait of Charles’ brother Henry, painted by Maurice Quentin de La Tour in Paris in 1747, had been mis-identified and used as the standard image of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ on everything from book covers to biscuit tins. If the Gosford portrait was remarked upon in any documents it was as a copy after a 1740s engraving by Robert Strange. Furthermore, a misunderstanding of both the primary sources and Ramsay’s political instincts had led scholars to believe that Ramsay would never have painted Charles in any case. 

Now, however, the acquisition of the Gosford portrait for the nation allows, for the first time, the public to see the undoubted face of Charles at this vital moment in British history. Although the picture’s significance has been slow to emerge since its discovery was highlighted by me on BBC2 in early 2014, I believe it has the potential to become one of the most important in Scotland’s public collections. (For example, I gather the picture will soon appear on the front cover of a new biography of Charles).

Portraiture was always an important element in the Jacobite cause: the Stuarts understood the power of visual imagery in keeping their cause alive in the hearts and minds of their supporters. An apparently unpublished letter in the Cumberland papers, [1] addressed to ‘Allan Ramsay, Painter’, shows that even at one of the most intense periods of the ’45 Charles was aware of the need to have an up-to-date likeness ready for circulation, doubtless in the form of an engraving. 

Charles had taken Edinburgh without a fight on 17th September, and a few days later on 21st September had defeated a government army at the Battle of Prestonpans. His thoughts thus turned to England, and on 30th October his advisers voted to move south. But it seems Charles wanted to take with him not only an army, but a painting.

He therefore summoned the best artist in town, Allan Ramsay, who had been in Edinburgh since September. The letter from John Stuart (most likely the John Stuart or Stewart who was Charles’ valet, and no relation) was an urgent summons to Ramsay to see Charles at Holyrood:

“Sir, you are desired to come to the Palace of Holyroodhouse as soon as possible in order to take his Royal Highness’ picture. So I expect you’ll wait no further call. 

I am, your most humble servant, John Stuart, 

Holyrood House 26th of October 1745.”

Ramsay was always known to have been in Edinburgh at some point during the 1745 rebellion. But how long he stayed and for what purpose was a matter of debate. Horace Walpole, writing in 1775, averred that, notwithstanding his later professions of loyalty to the Hanoverians, Ramsay was in fact a Jacobite:

“Ramsay the King’s Painter, who had been a Jacobite and who had set out to join the rebels, though he arrived too late…” [2]

The art historian George Vertue, writing in the 1740s, instead suggests that:

“Mr Allan Ramsay painter went lately to Scotland just about the breaking out of the Highlanders rebellion - and when they came to Edenboro and intended to batter the Castle they found a little house on the side of the Castle Hill which did belong to Ramsay. on that the begunt to place a battery - but at the Castle soon observing their intention they fired upon it. & soon demolish it - Ramsay is returned to London […] Xbr” [3]

The house mentioned is the ‘Goose-pie Hoose’, lived in by Ramsay’s father, the poet Allan Ramsay senior (and so-called because it resembled a goose pie). We shall probably never know the extent to which, if at all, Ramsay had intended to support politically Charles’ cause. But his inclinations were far from those he later professed as a fervent Hanoverian, and loyal german-speaking court painter to King George III. In fact, Ramsay had been presented to Charles and the Jacobite court in Rome in 1737. He had also joined a Jacobite masonic lodge there. Probably, like so many Scots at the time, he was prepared to hedge his bets - and of course was happy to take portrait commissions from whomever would pay. Surviving portraits painted by Ramsay in Edinburgh during the ’45 show both government and rebel sitters (the latter including Lord and Lady Ogilvy [Private Collection].)

We can be more certain, however, that Ramsay was in Edinburgh for long enough to both receive Charles’ summons, and to act on it. George Vertue’s remark that Ramsay was back in London in ‘Xbr’ has previously been interpreted by the leading Ramsay scholar Alastair Smart as meaning October; the ‘X’ referring to the roman numeral ten for the tenth month.[4] However, a more lengthy analysis of the manner in which Vertue wrote his dates reveals that ‘Xbr’ in fact means ‘December’, the ‘X’ denoting the Latin word for ten, ‘decem’, hence ‘decem-br’.

Nonetheless, Ramsay cannot have had much time to complete the commission, for Charles’ army entered England on 8th November. The hurried circumstances perhaps explain the picture’s small size, which is unusual for Ramsay. But the size of the canvas and Charles’ presentation within it also provide further clues as to the picture’s intended purpose. Here, Charles is wearing only the sash and star of the order of the Garter, the pre-eminent English royal order of chivalry, and not the Scottish equivalent, the Thistle. Normally, in accordance with a decree issued by his father James III, Charles would have been depicted wearing both. Nor is Charles wearing any tartan, which, we are told, he wore in Scotland during the ’45. In other words, Charles is consciously presenting himself as English, perhaps to assuage his intended new subjects that he was not leading a Scottish invasion, despite the presence of thousands of Highlanders in his army. 

The small canvas, 12 x 10 inches, was perhaps also intended to increase the picture’s portability. Among Charles’ invading army was the talented engraver and committed Jacobite, Robert Strange. There is no firm evidence that allows us to date Strange’s two portrait prints of Charles (one a mezzotint and the other an engraving made in Paris soon after the rebellion). It is unlikely that he would have had the time or the means to engrave Ramsay’s portrait whilst in England, but it seems logical to me at least that that was the portrait’s intended purpose. 

It was probably through the link with Strange that the portrait came to enter the collection of the Earls of Wemyss. After spending some years in exile, Strange returned to Scotland, where on March 3rd 1751 a purchase is recorded in the cash books at Gosford for a payment to ‘Robert Strange ingraver' [sic] of £27 10s 6d. (for items unspecified). It is also worth noting that the Wemyss/Charteris family were longstanding patrons of Ramsay after 1745, and there are still a number of portraits by Ramsay at Gosford. There are also a number of entries in the Gosford cash books for payments to Richard Cooper, Strange’s master in Edinburgh for six years. An undated inventory of the pictures at Gosford, probably compiled in the early 19th Century, lists a portrait of Charles by ‘Ramsey [sic]’ of the same dimensions. It seems to have been at Gosford ever since.

Technically, the picture fits well with Ramsay’s other portraits from the mid-1740s, most notably with the ground layer (somewhat rough, with little granules showing through on the surface), and the use of pure red pigment in areas of detail. Stylistically, the picture is in my view unmistakably by Ramsay (and I’m glad to say that Dr Duncan Thomson, a former director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, agreed the moment he saw the painting). Aside from a small, well-repaired tear, the picture is in excellent condition.

Notes:

[1] The letter was helpfully transcribed sometime after the War by the Hon. Clare Stuart Wortley in her typescript survey of references to Jacobite portraits in the Royal Archives. This typescript is now in the Heinz Archive.

[2] Alastair Smart, ‘Allan Ramsay, Painter Essayist and Man of the Enlightenment’, Yale 1992, p.290.

[3] ‘Vertue Notebooks III’, in The Walpole Society, Volume XXII, p.128.

[4] Smart, 1992 p.290.