Getty Museum

[Finlay of Colonsay, Deerstalker]

Date

April 17, 1845

Medium

Salted paper print from a paper negative

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> Finlay, a deerstalker for the Scottish folklorist John Campbell of Islay (1822-85), was responsible for scouting deer for hunting expeditions. This gallant portrait shows him, resplendent in tartan, standing against a rock face. The large size of the calotype imbues the work with a heroic quality, reminiscent of Sir Henry Raeburn's (1756-1823) painting [*Colonel Alastair Ranaldson Macdonnell of Glengarry*](https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/5300/colonel-alastair-ranaldson-macdonell-glengarry-1771-1828) (c. 1812; National Gallery of Scotland), where the subject emerges from a dark background. > > Like the [image of Charles Sobieski](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/99327/hill-adamson-charles-sobieski-stuart-about-1844/) Stuart (1799?-1880), this photograph is a romantic one, highlighting the traditional Highland costume of the kilt. While tartan and the kilt were firmly entrenched in Scottish character by Hill and Adamson's (David Octavius Hill [1802-70] and Robert Adamson [1821-48]) time, they were, to a certain extent, manufactured products of the seventeenth century. The modern kilt, as shown here, was adapted from the *féile-breacan*, a single piece of woolen cloth worn like a skirt and wrapped over one shoulder. > > Anne M. Lyden. *Hill and Adamson*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999), 58. ©1999, J. Paul Getty Museum.

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