Two portraits of prominent members of the Chief of the Clan Grant’s household are now on display at the National Museum of Scotland.
The oil paintings are the work of Scottish painter Richard Waitt (d.1732), and were commissioned in 1713 by Alexander, the Laird of Grant, as part of a series depicting clan members.
Originally housed at the chief’s seat of Castle Grant, near Grantown-on Spey, 20 miles south-east of Inverness, the portraits were intended to impress visitors and signify the Laird’s status as a Highland chieftain.
William Cumming is depicted in the portrait of The Piper. He had hailed from at least seven generations of Cummings who were pipers to Clan Grant. Wearing Highland dress, he flies the heraldic banner of the Grants.
The other portrait – The Champion to the Lair of the Grant – depicts Alasdair Mòr Grant, also wearing Highland dress and wielding a basket-hilted sword. He had managed the Laird’s timber business, and was known as a strong fighter.
‘We are grateful to Reidhaven Trust for the long-term loan of Richard Waitt’s portrait of The Champion to the Laird of Grant. We are delighted that it has been reunited with The Piper and is now on permanent display, as they once were in Castle Grant,’ said Dr Anna Groundwater, Principal Curator of Renaissance and Early Modern History at the NMS.
She added: ‘This is not a romanticised version of an imagined past – the figures in their Highland dress are documented as they looked at the time. Together they provide an insight into clan society from a time when this way of life was on the wane.’
Both works are now on display in the NMS’ Scotland Transformed gallery, alongside objects relating to the Jacobite risings such as Bonnie Prince Charlie’s silver travelling canteen, and military colours from both Jacobite and Hanoverian regiments that were carried into battle at Culloden in 1746.
