Colonel Alastair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry (1773 - 1828)

Wearing tartan from head to toe, Macdonell of Glengarry seems, in this portrait, to be the perfect image of a highland chief. However, Macdonell's romantic attachment to the customs and costumes of Gaelic culture did not stop him evicting his tenants to clear his lands for sheep farming. The writer Sir Walter Scott was a close friend, and he was probably thinking of Macdonell when he created the character of the doomed Jacobite clan chieftain, Fergus McIvor, in his novel Waverley.

Credit: Purchased 1917...