A historic artistic reattribution

Readers of January’s Signet Post will have been tantalised with news of an archival find at the Signet Library that tells a new story about the first portrait the Society owned: that of the donor of the Signet Library’s first book, George Dallas WS (admitted in 1661) of St Martin’s, Ross-shire (1636-1701). Our archival find revealed that the portrait, a copy, was painted from its original in the early 1790s by none other than Henry Raeburn, later Sir Henry. Dallas authored A System of Stiles As Now Practised in the Kingdom of Scotland (1674). Innovative for its time, A System of Stiles is a milestone in the history of the professionalisation of legal practice.

We have now been contacted by a descendant of Dallas who has very kindly provided us with the information that the original portrait from which our copy was taken was not the work of Sir John Medina as we have long believed, but by David Scougall, painted in 1660 to mark both the wedding of George Dallas and the Restoration of King Charles II. Scougall was the greatest Scottish portrait painter of his era and owned the first recognisable studio and gallery in Edinburgh, and his portrait of Keeper of the Signet Sir Hugh Paterson hangs in the Commissioners’ Room at the Signet Library.