JOHN ALEXANDER (1686-1766)
Portrait of George Gordon, 7th Laird of Buckie (1707-1756), c. 1743
Oil on canvas
In a carved ebonised frame, with gilded inner slight edge
76.5 x 63 cm.; (within frame) 89.5 x 76.2 cm.
Provenance:
Commissioned by Cosmo Gordon, 3rd Duke of Gordon (1720-1752), for Gordon Castle, Morayshire;
Recorded as no. 70 in Amy Gordon-Lennox, Countess of March’s 1877 Catalogue of Pictures at Gordon Castle;
Thence by descent to Charles Gordon-Lennox, 9th Duke of Richmond and Gordon;
Anderson and England, Gordon Castle sale, 31 August 1938, lot 1315;
Where purchased by John L. McNaughton, town clerk of Buckie;
Christie’s, King Street, where consigned on 30 May 1980, and transferred to Christie’s, South Kensington on 30 July 1980;
Ston Easton Park, Ston Easton, Bath, inv. no. P9;
Where acquired by McMillan & Sons Fine Art, Bute Street, London;
Private Collection, United Kingdom.
Literature:
James Holloway, Patrons and Painters: Art in Scotland, 1650-1760 (Broxburn, Scotland: Alna Press Ltd., 1989), p. 89
Amy Gordon-Lennox, Countess of March, Catalogue of Pictures at Gordon Castle (s.n., 1877), p. 159
Painted in half-length profile within a feigned oval cartouche, Gordon’s typically genteel attire comprises a powdered periwig, deep blue silk frock coat, and frilled linen stock. The cartouche bears the inscription, ‘George/Gordon/BVC-/-KIE’, a reference to Gordon’s lairdship of the Buckie territories on the Moray Firth. The portrait was commissioned by Cosmo Gordon, 3rd Duke of Gordon, and passed by descent for two centuries within the collection of the Dukes of Gordon at Gordon Castle, hanging in a primary bedroom alongside three portraits of the Ducal Gordons by John Alexander. Amy Gordon-Lennox, Countess of March, recorded the work in her 1877 catalogue of paintings at the castle, and it was sold by the 9th Duke in 1938. It was afterwards in the collection of Ston Easton Park, Bath.
George Gordon was one of the numerous Gordons painted by Alexander, whose patrons largely comprised north-easterly Jacobites. The round fullness of his features is typical of Alexander’s characterful style; the chestnut colouring of the subtly gradated background and surrounding cartouche are likewise consistent with the artist’s preference for mild mid-tones. The present work is compositionally similar to Alexander’s 1741 portrait of William Chalmers of Westburn in the Aberdeen City Council Collection (ABDAG008205), and would suggest Alexander’s repetition of preferred compositional arrangements. The canvas and frame are marked with records of sale and inventory verso. Evocatively, inscriptions written in pencil on the canvas stretcher bars read, ‘Left of fireplace’ and ‘Right of east window’.
George Gordon was the 7th Laird of Buckie, Banffshire, a branch of the Gordons whose lands had once included those of Cairnfield. Gordon was a Jacobite loyalist, and in 1745 took up arms in the rising led by Charles Edward Stuart to reinstate the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart. Gordon’s role in the uprising was not insignificant: a letter dated 20 October 1745 records that, ‘George Gordon of Buckie […] and most of the gentlemen of Banffshire, mounted on horses’ had the honour of being always with Prince Charles (Tayler, p. 77). Gordon was joined by his younger brother, Charles, likely the Charles Gordon said to have assisted in robbing Sir James Sinclair (commander of the Hanoverian Royal Scots) of his horses near Portsoy on 7 May 1746 (McDonnell, p. 20). Indeed, Alexander himself was present during the combat along with his son, Cosmo Gordon. Other Gordon representatives included Alexander Gordon, 2nd Duke of Gordon. Hanoverian retribution followed the failed rising, and Alexander was declared a wanted man in 1746, though resumed working shortly thereafter by 1748.
Alexander had met the 2nd Duke of Gordon around 1717 whilst working in Italy. Head of one of the leading Roman Catholic families in Scotland, the Duke’s great continental friendships included Cosimo III de’Medici. Upon their return to Scotland, the Duke commissioned Alexander to paint an ambitious ceiling decoration for the staircase at Gordon Castle between 1720-25, alongside three large views of Rome, and portraits of the Ducal children, including Cosmo Gordon, later 3rd Duke of Gordon – after whom Alexander would name his own son, Cosmo Alexander. It was the 3rd Duke who would commission the present portrait some two decades later in c. 1743, having employed Alexander to paint important kinsmen and tenants for display in the Castle (Holloway, p. 89).
John Alexander was one of the leading Scottish artists of the 18th century. Born to an Aberdeen doctor, he boasted patrilineal descent from George Jamesone, a purported student of Rubens and Van Dyck, and the founder of a Scottish school of portraiture which found its highest expression in Ramsay and Raeburn in the following century. Alexander travelled to Rome in 1711 where he trained under Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari. He produced engravings after Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican Loggia, and worked for the Marquess of Annandale to collect paintings and sculpture; he made drawings of the works, and collected some copies for himself, which he brought back to Scotland in 1720. Whilst in Italy, Alexander received commissions from the Medici in Florence, and the exiled Stuart court in Rome, who included the Lord Chief Justice Coke and the Earl of Mar. Lord Mar had arrived in Italy after the failed Jacobite rising of 1715, and even commissioned Alexander on behalf of the exiled Royal family: Alexander wrote to Mar, ‘You will receive from the post the Parnassus of Raphael […] I pray you anew to excuse my weak beginnings to the King’ (Holloway, p. 86).
Alexander married Isobel Innes of Tillyfour in 1723 and their son Cosmo was born the following year. Their younger son Charles was sent abroad to the Scots Benedictine College at Ratisbon, and his daughter married George Chalmers, son to Roderick Chalmers and heir to an impoverished baronetcy. Alexander took a number of aristocratic commissions, which included the 4th Earl and Countess of Kinmore; James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Hamilton; and the 7th Earl of Wemyss. He was based in Edinburgh in his later career, painting figures of early Enlightenment Edinburgh, such as George Drummond, the Lord Provost who had envisaged the grid plan of Edinburgh’s New Town. Alexander was a close friend of the architect James Gibbs, and the engraver and antiquary George Vertue, who described the artist as ‘a merry dispos’d gent, [who] laughs eternally’ (Holloway, p. 85). Alexander was a signatory in 1729 of the charter of Scotland’s first art institution, the Academy of St Luke of Edinburgh.
I am grateful to Amanda Sharp of Goodwood House for providing archival material pertaining to the Gordon Castle sale of 1938.
Bibliography and further reading:
Anderson and England, Catalogue of Antiques and Other Surplus Furnishings […] To be sold by Auction by Instructions of His Grace, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon (Elgin, 1938)
Bulloch, J.M., Gordons of Cairnfield, And Their Hold on the Lands of Echres, Auchinhalrig, Ardneidlie, Cuffurach, Mayne, Myrieton, Coynach, Whitburn, Lunan, Briggs, Arradoul and Rosieburn (Edinburgh: Keith, 1910)
Gordon-Lennox, Amy, Countess of March, Catalogue of Pictures at Gordon Castle (s.n., 1877)
Holloway, James, Patrons and Painters: Art in Scotland, 1650-1760 (Broxburn, Scotland: Alna Press Ltd., 1989)
Macmillan, Duncan, Scottish Art: 1460-1990 (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company, 1990)
McDonnell, Frances, Jacobites of 1715, North East Scotland and Jacobites of 1745, North East Scotland (Baltimore, M.A.: Clearfield, 2008)
Tayler, Alistar, A Jacobite Exile (London: A MacLehose & Co., 1937)