John Drummond, 4th titular Duke of Perth, 1714 - 1747. Jacobite
Domenico Duprà (1689 - 1770) · 1739 · National Galleries of Scotland.
Tartan plaid draped over the left shoulder and across the lower body and right forearm.
4th Duke of Perth, by Duprà, 1739, NGS
Recovered sett
A proposed reading, recovered by hand from the painted cloth (see the method).
DB/32 R14 DB8 R14 G34 Y2 G10 Y2 G34 R64 DB10 R8 Y2 R/10
Reference: k16r7k4r7dg17ly1dg5ly1dg17r32k5r4ly1r5~x2~k1402336-r4816036-dg3505108-ly6611078 — open in the TTD editor.
This reading is in the dictionary: the named tartan it leads — its own sett.
The register's recovery
This painting has been read before: the Scottish Register of Tartans holds Unnamed C18th #4 (Duke of Perth) (STA 460, SRT 4417), an independent recovery of the same painted cloth.
B60 R28 B4 R28 G40 W2 G4 W2 G40 R88 B8 R20 A2 R8 A2 R20 B8 R88 G40 W2 G4 W2 G40 R28 B4 R28
Reference: db30r14db2r14g20w1g2w1g20r44db4r10lb1r4~x2 — the register's record is itself in the corpus.
From a painting by Dominique Dupra which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. The white stripe could be yellow.
— the register's registration notes
Nearest tartans
The recovered sett searched against every corpus variant by ΔTartan — candidate sources for the painted cloth, beyond the curated match below.
Matched tartan
The closest corpus tartan (a curated match): Drummond of Perth — SRT 910.
Matched thread count: R/72 W2 B6 Y2 G32 R16 B6 A4 W/2
This reading:
The register's (STA 460):
This is an iconic tartan, and among the most important tartan witnesses anywhere. Its provenance is excellent: a named sitter, a named painter, and a firm date — painted in Italy in 1739 by Domenico Duprà, portraitist to the exiled Stuart court — six years before the '45. And the cloth is no incidental costume: the plaid is given deliberate prominence in the composition, draped over the shoulder and across the body of John Drummond, 4th titular Duke of Perth, so the tartan is worn as a statement of exactly what it was coming to symbolise — the Jacobite cause. The story runs on through the family: it was into the household of John's brother James, Duke of Perth, that Adam Drummond of Megginch was held under house arrest after being captured at Prestonpans.
Read by hand from the painted plaid, de-varnished through the lace whites, the recovered sett matches Drummond of Perth, independently of the sitter's name. Domenico Duprà painted it in 1739, which would make it a candidate earliest dated witness to the sett, predating Logan (1831). The Scottish Register of Tartans preserves an independent reading taken from this same canvas — Unnamed C18th #4 (Duke of Perth), STA 460 — and the two agree element for element on the sett's whole skeleton: a dark pivot, twin fourteen-thread reds about a dark line, a green ground split by twin thin lines, a broad red ground with its dark guard, and one more thin line before the red pivot. Where the register saw white — conceding it “could be yellow” — we read yellow, and its azure line we read as yellow again; beyond that the two part only on counts, as any two eyes on varnished folds will.
National Galleries of Scotland (PG 1597). Purchased 1953. Photo: Antonia Reeve.