Notes on the Art Treasures at Penicuik House Midlothian — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Notes on the Art Treasures at Penicuik House Midlothian
John Stuart Mill · en
There is also in the Dining-room an interesting cabinet-sized portrait
of Sir George’s younger brother, John Clerk Maxwell of Middleby, that
genial, practical, individual Scotsman of whom a most interesting
account is given in the life of his distinguished son, Professor James
Clerk Maxwell. The picture is the work of his niece, Miss Isabella
Clerk, and shows some traces of the amateur, especially in the size and
uncouthness of the hands, but a comparison with the engraving from the
portrait by Watson Gordon, given in the above-mentioned volume, proves
it to be a substantially faithful likeness of the good old man.
IX.
We now come to glance at the portraits at Penicuik House which do
not represent members of the Clerk family. Among the earliest of
these, hung in the Dining-room, is a three-quarter-length seated
portrait of Sir Archibald Primrose, Lord Carrington, that ancestor of
the Rosebery family who played an important part in politics during
the Restoration period, who fought under Montrose, was captured at
Philiphaugh, and barely escaped being executed for treason; who was
appointed Lord Clerk Register in 1660, and Lord Justice-General in
1676, presiding, in that office, at the trial in 1678, of Mitchell
for the attempted assassination of Archbishop Sharp; and whose later
years were spent in steady opposition to the administration of the
Duke of Lauderdale. He is styled by Burnet “the subtelist of all Lord
Middletoun’s friends, a man of long and great practice in affairs ...;
a dextrous man of business, he had always expedients ready at every
difficulty.” In the picture he appears in his black, gold-laced robes
as Lord Clerk Register, his right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
the left raised, and his face seen in three-quarters to the right,
with its thin prominent nose drooping at the point, small chin, and
lips rising towards the ends and pursed and dimpled a little at the
corners. A similar picture, but only bust-sized, stated (Catalogue of
Royal Scottish Academy Loan Exhibition, 1863) to be dated 1670, has
been long at Dalmeny, and a copy of it was presented by Lord Rosebery
to the Faculty of Advocates in 1883, and now hangs in the Parliament
House. His Lordship has recently acquired, from the Rothes Collection,
another, a three-quarter length, version of the picture; and we are
informed that there is also a similar-sized version in the possession
of Lord Elphinstone. A portrait of Sir Archibald Primrose appears in
Mr. A. H. Millar’s list of the portraits at Kinnaird Castle, but we
have not examined this work, and cannot say whether it is a repetition
of the present portrait.