Print Specifics:
- Type of print: Steel engraving - Original antique print
- Year of printing: not indicated in the print - est. 1860s
- Original artist/Engraver: Johnston / Armytage
- Publisher: London, Virtue & Co., City Road & Ivy Lane
- Condition: 1 (1. Excellent - 2. Very good - 3. Good - 4. Fair)
- Dimensions:
8 x 10.5 inches, including blank margins (borders) around the image. Blank margins around the image not shown in the
photo. Image dimensions: 5 x 6.5 inches.
- Paper weight: 2 (1. Thick - 2. Heavier - 3. Medium heavy - 4. Slightly heavier - 5. Thin)
- Reverse side: Blank
Narrative:
With the disuse in England of embroidered coats, lace cravats and
ruffs, satin breeches, buckled shoes, periwigs, and all the adjuncts
that made up the costume of the upper, and also of no small portion of
the middle, classes of the male sex a century or more ago, the peculiar
national dress of our fellow-countrymen “ over the border,” underwent
as decided a change, Except upon special occasions, such as those of
state ceremonies, festal gatherings, national, or rather clannish,
meetings, what is known as the Scottish, or Highland, costume has long
since gone out of fashion, to give place to those modern habiliments
which, however more convenient they may be, have not the remotest
pretension to picturesque character in any one of their details. Yet,
as regards the material of which some portion of the Highland dress was
made, the plaid, or tartan, in its varied coloru's, still holds its
place, and, probably, will never lose its hold on general esteem.
In former times the Scottish lassies were accustomed to adopt for
walking attire a large plaid shawl, in summer of silk, in winter of
wool, which covered the head as well as a portion of the body. Allan
Ramsay, one of Scotland’s most esteemed poets, who lived in the early
part of the last century, admired it as an elegant and decorous piece
of dress. He resolved to vindicate its merits, and turn, if possible,
the tide of fashion which threatened to strip his countrywomen of their
appropriate ornament. In 1721 he wrote a poem entitled “ Tartana, or
the Plaid,” in honour of the garment: its merits as a poem are not of a
very high‘ order; but it is marked by earnestness of feeling and
simplicity of expression.
- A theme which would arouse the imagination of a
Scottish poet could scarcely pass unrecognized by a Scottish painter
like Mr. A. Johnston, whose elegant figures, "Tartana" shows to
advantage the Favourite plaid-costume of his fair countrywomen.
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