This swaggering portrait of a Scotsman clearly proud of his nationality, and appearing simultaneously to claim ownership of a very different cultural inheritance, is as ambiguous in its intention as all these clashing indicators would suggest. The painter of the portrait had no connection to Scotland, and, although an Italian, put together all the vestiges of ancient Rome to create an entirely illusory veneer of classical learning.
Batoni was indeed a Roman, and in the age of the Grand Tour became the “go-to” portrait painter of the British Milordi who flocked to the centre of Christianity as well as the capital of the most powerful empire of the ancient world. He never visited England, but painted so many British sitters that when I looked after British paintings at the Tate Gallery we considered him a worthy candidate for representation in the national school. Indeed he was responsible for some of the most enduring images of the British at a time when they were most engaged with Europe and European culture.
William Gordon (1736-1816) was the second surviving son of the 2nd Earl of Aberdeen and Lady Anne Gordon, daughter of the 2nd Duke of Gordon. Batoni shows him arrayed in the uniform of the Queen’s Own Royal Highlanders, 105th Foot Regiment. The Huntley tartan that he displays so proudly had been illegal since the failure of the ’forty-five in 1746 (the Catholic Bonnie Prince Charlie’s attempt to gain the British Crown), and though it was permitted for military wearers there is here an unmistakeable sense of the frisson of rebellion, wonderfully interlaced with archaeological learning and cultural superiority.
Ancient Rome is signified by the ruins of the Colosseum in the backdrop to Gordon’s portrait: not as obviously recognizable as one might expect, but perhaps a subtle hint that the sitter was perfectly acquainted with the monument in all its familiar aspects. In any case, Batoni had recourse to the Colosseum in so many of his representations of Milordi that he was constrained to invent new scenic effects all the time. The seated figure on the plinth is a notional personification of Rome: we are not being compelled to think about a particular place, but rather to contemplate the mellow and picturesque atmosphere of the legendary city as a noble idea.
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