Tuesday, November 29, 2016


  MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS WITH HER SON
 King James VI of Scotland, King James I of England as a child.
Written and illustrated from first-hand research by George W. Randall, co-founder in July 1996 and former Vice Chairman of Kinloch Castle Friends’ Association.

 

 Kinloch Castle, Isle of Rum, Scotland, was commissioned in 1897 by 
George Bullough, (1870 - 1939), as his Highland home. 
He was knighted in 1902 and raised to the Baronetcy in 1916. 
On 28 February 1957, the eighty-seventh anniversary of Sir George’s birth, 
his eighty-eight year old widow, Lady Monica Bullough and the Trustees 
of his Estate agreed transfer of the 26,400 acre island, castle and its contents 
to the British Government for the peppercorn price of ₤23,000.

* >< * >< * >< * >< * >< * >< * + * >< * >< * >< * >< * >< * >< *
 
Located in Kinloch Castle's Great Hall is this chronologically incorrect oil 
painting of  Mary Queen of Scots and her son,
part of the Sir George Bullough, Bt. Memorial, was accepted
 as such by the Conservative  Government of the day on behalf of the Nation.

The 26,400 acre island, with its fully furnished former late Victorian hunting lodge, 
was entrusted by the government to Nature Conservancy, 
to be used by as an outdoor laboratory for the conservation and enhancement of Scotland’s natural heritage. 


In 1992 management transferred to Scottish Natural Heritage, (SNH), the Nature Conservancy successor agency totally funded from taxation and responsible to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, in 2019 / 2020 their budget was £46.5 million. (Over US$55,000,000. November 2022)
                                                                                                                                                                                           
In November 2019 SNH changed its name to NatureScot, its budget for 2020 / 2021 was 
£56.3 million almost US$65,000,000. (November 2022)
Headquartered at Great Glen House, Inverness, 
this Scottish Government funded agency has 736 employees. 

Regrettably in the intervening sixty-five years to today no specific care body or funding 
has ever been allocated or sought for the protection and conservation of these magnificent 
publicly owned treasures.

                                                                                            Photographed  by the author August 2011.

*
The painting is a deliberate example of an anachronism in art ... ... 
a chronological inconsistency designed to help a contemporary audience engage more readily with a period in history.

                                                                                                              (Portrait from Wikipedia)

The unattributed portrait of Mary and James above bears the date 1583, 
when James would have been seventeen years old. 


History records Mary never saw her son again after
visiting him at Stirling Castle on 24 April 1567 when he was nine months old.

It was on her way back to Edinburgh from Stirling that Mary was captured. 
                                 
           Professional Descriptions and Appraisals of the Kinloch Castle Portrait:

This work was described by Phillips Art Auctioneers and Valuers, Edinburgh in 1978 as: 
“Bust of Mary Queen of Scots in dark coat and coloured dress, 
King James I as a boy at her side. 27½ x 35½  inches. Panel paint flaking.”

In 1992 and 1996 Phillips recorded: 
"Follower of Marcus Gheerhardts. Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots with James I standing by her side and with child. Oil on panel. 71 x 91 cms."

In August 2007, Messrs. Bonhams, (founded in 1793, and one of the world’s oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques), described the work as: 
"Follower of Marcus Gheerhardts. 
Portrait of a lady, said to be Mary Queen of Scots, with a child, said to be the future 
King James I, another at her side (unlikely as Mary only had one child.) 
Oil on panel. 71 x 91 cms."
 *
The portrait was one of a "Survey of the Condition of 25 Easel Paintings at Kinloch Castle" examined in March 1996 by a professional art conservator. 

The work, one of three of the twenty-five surveyed, 
was described as being in 
“extremely poor condition, in need of urgent work.”

*
Description: 
"Title: Mary Queen of Scots with James VI when a child."
"Artist: after Holbein. * Medium: oil. * Support: panel."

 The Conservator's Report, now twenty-six years old, is comprehensive and highly critical: The work was examined framed.

"The structure as well as the surface of the painting is fragile and, as the painting could be examined easily from the back, it was not removed from the frame."
The painting was deemed "structurally unstable throughout. Dramatic losses in the lower right area reveal the thinly gessoed* wood beneath. 
This problem has been continuing over many years and the back of the panel bears witness to attempts to restrain its movement and arrest the problem.
The three sturdy horizontal battens have however created other problems."

*  Gessoed: A white ground of plaster and size used to prepare panels or canvas for painting especially in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.


In 1996 a professional art conservator was commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage 
to survey twenty-five paintings in Kinloch Castle. 
Her Report on this painting included the comments:
“There is an area, approx. 23 x 34 cms. actively flaking and delaminating in the lower right corner, as well as plenty of evidence of earlier losses in the centre of the right side ... Water staining was noted along the bottom of the frame. 
 ... ... the paintings present location was not considered practical.”
 *
“In the long-term there may well be no satisfactory solution to the stabilisation of the painting other than maintaining it in a stable environment and minimising the fluctuations of temperature and relative humidity; at Kinloch Castle this is not practicable.
 *
Many recommendations were made, most required treatment off-site in a 
dedicated studio. Immediate action: "stabilisation and application of f
acing tissue and adhesive across the surface of the painting to avoid any 
further loss of paint and ground layers."
 *
The 1996 Report concluded none of the treatment options could be guaranteed to arrest the continuing problems displayed 
by the present surface condition of the painting.

"Structurally unstable, the painted panel is constructed of three sections of
timber which appear to have caused problems over a long period of time.
There has been movement along both vertical joints."
*
Mary was reputedly a red-head, but she often wore a wig in life and in portraits.
Portraits depict her with “a small, well-shaped head, a long graceful neck, 
bright auburn hair, hazel brown eyes, under heavy lowered eyelids and finely arched brows, smooth luscious skin, a high forehead, and regular, firm features.”

King James VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland was born on 19 July 1566. 


Mary Queen of Scots was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Castle, west of Edinburgh, the only surviving legitimate daughter of King James V of Scotland and his wife Mary of Guise. Only six days old when her father died, Mary was crowned on 
9 September 1543 aged nine months of age. Her reign lasted until 24 July 1567.
On 24 April 1558, eight months short of her sixteenth birthday, 
Mary married fourteen year old Francis II of France. A sickly child, 
Francis died on 5 December 1560, aged sixteen.

On 9 July 1565, Mary married her first cousin, twenty year old Henry Stuart, 
Lord Darnley, their union produced a son, the future King James VI of Scotland 
and King James I of England and Ireland, born 19 July 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, 
and possibly the child in this portrait.

Mary's marriage to Darnley was not a happy one. On 10 February 1567, while recuperating from a bout of smallpox, there was a huge explosion at the Edinburgh house in which the couple were staying and Darnley was discovered dead in the orchard, apparently strangled, possibly smothered.
(Modern science suggests he died from internal injuries while fleeing the blast which would show no outward damage leading to the conclusion at the time.)

Theories abounded as to the perpetrators, thirty-three year old James Hepburn 4th Earl of
Bothwell being the leading contender having supplied the gunpowder for the explosion.
He was later acquitted in a mock trial before parliament on 
12 April 1567.

Thirty-three days later, on 15 May 1567, at Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, 
Mary married Bothwell who had divorced his first wife, Jean Gordon, twelve days previously.
A month later the Scottish nobility turned against Mary and Bothwell and Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle on an island in Loch Leven on 17 June 1767. Here she became very ill and shortly after Mary miscarried twins she had conceived with Bothwell.

On 24 July Queen Mary was forced to abdicate the Scottish throne 
in favour of her 
one year old son, James; the future King James VI of Scotland 
and King James I of England.

Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, 
she was forty-four years old, her son James was twenty.
* 
The following labels and inscriptions are on the back of the frame:
      The next label  --


plus the stenciled 45 4 CD are to be found on another painting  - 
“Portrait of Charles II in a Yellow Coat” -- 
 in the Kinloch Castle collection, indicate the pictures were sold by Christies on the instructions of the Trustees of Sir Thomas Charles Callis Western, Baronet, 
Felix Hall, Essex.

“Christie’s sale of .. the pictures .. which hung at Felix Hall 
         were sold .. in June 1913.”  
          
WESTERN FAMILY PORTRAITS


Sir Thomas Western 3rd Baronet (1850 – 1917) is reputed to have squandered his inheritance. 
The first crash came in 1893, when, By Order of the High Sheriff of Essex, 
an auction of some of his property took place on 4 July at the Angel Inn, Kelvedon.
*
In October 2011 opinion was sought from the Curator of 16th and 17th Century portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery, London, after being sent a photograph of the painting. 

The replied stated::

“The pregnant woman with child is not of Mary, Queen of Scots. She left James I before he was one year old and didn’t have any more children and in any case was dead by the time this picture was painted. Follower of Gheerhardts seems fine as an attribution.”

This seems a somewhat dismissive response, lacking any justification for being 
so certain  “The pregnant woman with child is not of Mary, Queen of Scots.”

It is an acknowledged fact Mary never saw her son again after her visit to
him in Sterling Castle in July 1657. Equally it is known Mary was pregnant with twins
by Bothwell, but miscarried after her imprisonment in June 1567.

Clearly the work is chronologically incorrect, but it could still, however imperfectly 
be a representation of Mary, Queen of Scots, who was pregnant with twins, 
even  though at the time her only child James was less than one year old,
yet portrayed as a boy some years older.

As to the artist, Marcus Gheerhardts the Elder (1520 - 1590) could well be a contender.
As a painter associated with the Court in the mid-16th Century,
he would have been aged forty-seven in 1567 the year Mary miscarried.
 Equally, of course, the work could be by one of his followers.
Then there is the suggestion of an unknown artist after an original by Hans Holbein.

Were Christie's,  the world's leading art business founded in 1766, 
mistaken  in describing the work as “Mary, Queen of Scots and James I after Holbein ?”
*
So does the Kinloch Castle portrait depict Mary, Queen of Scots and her son, James ?

And who is the artist ?
It deserves a more careful and preferably first-hand look by more than one expert.

*
The painting is chronologically incorrect, an anachronism,
        deliberately designed to help a contemporary audience engage more readily with a period in history.


Portraits depict Mary, Queen of Scots
 with “a small, well-shaped head, a long graceful neck, bright auburn hair,
hazel brown eyes, under heavy lowered eyelids and finely arched brows,
smooth luscious skin, a high forehead, and regular, firm features.”
*
Don’t let Britain’s heritage be lost through indifference -
Express your concern by contacting:
The Scottish Parliament
St. Andrew’s House, 
Regent Street,
Edinburgh, EH1 3DG, Scotland.

Telephone: 0141 424 1174

*


POSTED BY GEORGE W. RANDALL 
TO RAISE PUBLIC AWARENESS TO THE NEGLECT AND POSSIBLE LOSS 
 OF ALL PUBLICLY OWNED ARTIFACTS IN KINLOCH CASTLE.

UPDATED 29 OCTOBER 2023



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