Exclusive:First 'purely Scottish' portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie discovered in private collection

The portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart was painted around 1750 in Rome by Scottish artist Katherine Read, who hailed from a wealthy Jacobite family in Angus and who went into exile on the Continent following the failed 1745 Rising.

The Prince is depicted wearing a blue sash, worn from left to right, which on its own represents a Knight of the Order of the Thistle, Scotland’s greatest heraldic order and highest honour.

Professor Edward Corp, historian and art historian, said it was the only known portrait of Prince Charles that showed him in a “purely Scottish” light. This is given the Scottish artist and the fact she did not depict him as both a Knight of the Order of the Thistle and a Knight of The Order of the Garter, the English equivalent.

Instead, the painting identified him "exclusively with Scotland".

READ MORE: Clan chief gifts 400-year-old ‘Outlander’ mausoleum to Highland community

Prof Corp, who previously taught British History at the University of Toulouse and who has written several books on the Stuarts in exile, said : “In order to show that these were the Stuart princes living in exile, they were painted wearing both the Garter and the Thistle. Sometimes you have the Garter, but not the Thistle.

“But you never, until now, have the Thistle without the Garter. So this is the first time we have ever seen Bonnie Prince Charlie with that and therefore identifying him with Scotland rather than Great Britain as a whole.”

By contrast, the recently discovered portrait of the Prince by Edinburgh-born Allan Ramsay , painted in autumn 1745, depicts him wearing the Order of the Garter given it was “specifically intended" to go to England as the Jacobites marched south towards London.

READ MORE: Bonnie Prince Charlie’s victory ball at the Palace of Holyrood House

The Katherine Read portrait is one of three in a private collection in Somerset and hangs alongside oils of Prince Henry - the brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie - and their father, James, who was styled James VIII and III by those who claimed the British throne was rightfully his.

Read's portrait of Prince Charles was based on an oil pastel by her tutor in Paris, Maurice Quentin de la Tour. She, like many other wealthy Jacobites, headed to Paris in 1746 following Culloden and the failed attempt to return the Stuart dynasty to the British throne.

The oil pastel painted by La Tour, along with another of Prince Henry, was shown at the Paris Salon in August 1748 and remained in the city thereafter.

Prof Corp said Read would have known the oil pastel “intimately”, given her close connection to La Tour, and went on to “completely reinterpret it”, removing the English Garter and making it “thistle only”.

“Read was able to study the two portraits both when they were being painted and then when they were exhibited, and in that same year she made a copy in oil of each of them,” he added.

Prof Corp said he believed Read took working drawings with her to Rome, where she arrived in 1750.

READ MORE: Bonnie Prince Charlie asked France for 20,000 soldiers to fight on after Culloden

She then went on to reinterpret the work in a style that “could only have been painted by someone who had actually seen and met the mature prince both in Scotland and Paris".

Prof Corp said he believed Katherine Read saw the Prince in Edinburgh in 1745 and then likely met him in Paris between late 1746 and the end of 1748, when her tutor La Tour was painting him.

In Read’s painting, Bonnie Prince Charlie is depicted not in wig, but with his natural hair, which would have been more often on show in Scotland, given he was on military campaign.

Prof Corp said: “I think this is a very fine portrait indeed. As a friend said to me, ‘you would think she was in love with Prince Charles’.

He described the painting as “extremely valuable” in terms of Scottish art history, as well as political history.

“We have got portraits of Bonnie Prince Charlie before the 1745 rising and we have got portraits after,” he said. “Allan Ramsay gives us a portrait of the Prince before Culloden and what we have here is a portrait after defeat.

“The man in this portrait is not giving up. We know that he is never going to get back, but here we see a man determined, positive and optimistic. I think that comes through in this portrait.

“The Allan Ramsay portrait is wonderful, but there are two things to note. It is painted very quickly as a sort of an oil sketch, it is not a really big finished portrait.

“It is done quickly in Edinburgh. Bonnie Prince Charlie is away to head off south into England and he wanted a portrait that could be reproduced, maybe on an engraving and maybe on a banknote.

“And so it is only English - only the garter and no trace of a thistle.”

Read, who was raised near Forfar, was raised in a Jacobite family, with both her mother and father supporting the cause. Her uncle, Sir John Wedderburn, 5th Baronet of Blackness, was captured after Culloden and executed in 1746.

It is said she was the first woman from Scotland to train as an artist and she was confident of her talents, writing to her brother “you'll see I'll top it with the best of them”.

By the late 1750s, she had established her studio in London and her career took off in 1761 when she was commissioned to paint Queen Charlotte and her children.

Of the Read portrait, Prof Corp said he would like to see it in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where he earlier curated an exhibition of the Stuarts in exile.

"I do not know the owner,” he said. “I have no personal interest in this at all.

“Obviously it has considerable monetary value, there is no doubt. I would love it to go to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but they would have to pay a lot for it.”