Portrait of Jane Whiteside (1790–1878), wife of Dr David Maclagan by Sir John Watson Gordon

Portrait of Jane Whiteside (1790–1878), wife of Dr David Maclagan

Sir John Watson Gordon RA PRSA (1788–1864)

oil on canvas

30 x 25 1/2 in (oval)

inscribed with title on label verso

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

In many ways Watson Gordon was Raeburn’s successor, particularly in the range of his sitters and the degree of his success. Unlike Raeburn, however, he had an academic training – at the Trustees’ Academy – and his drawing is always accurate and his composition carefully considered.. [Continued below]

Commentary by Duncan Thomson

Initially he painted a number of genre scenes and historical subjects but on Raeburn’s death in 1823 a remunerative portrait practice beckoned and he set out to fill this gap in the market. He was not without competitors to the same extent as Raeburn had been – for example, his uncle George Watson and Colvin Smith (who took over Raeburn’s old studio) were both accomplished and original portraitists. To distinguish himself from others with the same surname, he added the name Gordon to the plain Watson in 1826. His overwhelming eminence in early and mid-Victorian Scotland was marked by a knighthood in 1850. Jane Whiteside was the daughter of Dr Philip Whiteside of Ayr. She married Dr David Maclagan about 1811. He served in the Peninsular War in Portugal and became President of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Among their seven sons were Sir Andrew Maclagan, a famous professor of forensic medicine and William Maclagan, Archbishop of York. Her grandson Sir Eric Maclagan became director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The portrait of Mrs Maclagan is infused with a rare honesty. It is essentially a realist work before realism became an art historical concept. Entirely ‘modern’ in its engagement with the inner person, it is a portrait that leaves the viewer, who is immediately arrested by the subject’s gaze, in no doubt that this is how Jane Whiteside looked – and how she looked on the world, and her place in it. The only element of artificiality is that we know that she is sitting in Watson Gordon’s studio in Edinburgh and no doubt conversing with him from time to time. But that is in its way another layer of realism. The details of her muslinfringed cap, the ties beneath her chin, the black satin dress and the yellow shawl are all painted with a straightforward concern for visual facts that match the subject’s confident exchange with the artist – and the viewer. Watson Gordon exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855 (which famously rejected Courbet) and a portrait of this quality would have looked entirely at home in that French context.

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References

Five Centuries of Scottish Portraiture. Exhibition Catalogue. Edinburgh: Bourne Fine Art; London: The Fine Art Society, 2011. No. 17, pp. 42-43.

Last modified 27 September 2011