Blast of romance

ONE of the better-known images of Bonnie Prince Charlie is the one painted by John Pettie a century after the Prince’s death. It shows him pausing as he enters the ballroom at Holyroodhouse accompanied by two Highland chieftains, perhaps Lochiel and Pitsligo. He wears a féileadh-mór over a dress coat and silk waistcoat. The scene is supposed to be a state ball held by the Prince shortly before his victory over the Hanoverian forces at Prestonpans, during his occupation of Edinburgh in September and October 1745.

However, this, published to huge acclaim in July 1814. Might the fiction have inspired the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball on the eve of Waterloo a year later? Pettie illustrated an 1893 edition of , having exhibited this painting in 1892. There was no full-length portrait of the Prince to base it on, so he used as a model his son-in-law, Hamish MacCunn, composer of much more than .