(French, 1797-1856)

Edouard en Ecosse, not apparently signed, oil on panel, 17-7/8 x 14-5/8 in.; gilt wood and composition frame, 26 x 23 in.

Note from Christie's sale of this painting: "The artist has, either used his licence or has muddled various details of the first meeting of the Prince and Flora MacDonald. On Sunday, 22nd June, 1746, Prince Charles was at Calvay on the Southern shore of Lochboisdale in South Uist when news reached him that a Royal Navy detachment from the sloop 'Tryal', under Captain Scott, had landed two miles away. Two other Naval vessels the 'Baltimore' and the 'Raven' appeared at the mouth of the loch. The Prince, Neil MacEachen and Captain Felix O'Neil made for the hills, while Colonel John O'Sullivan, being old and fat, stayed on the beach with the luggage - he had been Adjutant-General of the Jacobite army and was partly responsible for the disastrous choice of Culloden as the site to give battle. Prince Charles's party hid in a cave behind Beinn Ruigh Choinnich (probably that depicted here), where they were reached by a messenger from Hugh MacDonald of Armadale. Armadale suggested that the Prince should be ferried over to Skye, disguised as a maid, accompanying her 'employer', his step-daughter, Flora MacDonald, who had been visiting her brother (Angus MacDonald of Milton) on South Uist. Things now become very 'West Coast'. Armadale was the commander of the Militia company supposedly searching for the Prince on South Uist! Setting out with his two (not three) companions, the Prince went to Unasary near Loch Eynort, where he agreed to meet her in a shieling after midnight. They quickly made the necessary arrangements and Flora MacDonald left for Benbecula to set them in train. The Prince was led into hiding in the hills near Corrodale by MacEachen, a local man who was a cousin of Flora. We believe that Delaroche has assumed the first meeting of the 'Heroic Couple' took place in the cave and that he wrongly thought the Prince still had three companions. As MacEachen, O'Neill and O'Sullivan had all served in the Irish units of the French army (and, in O'Neill's case, in the Spanish army too), Delaroche is probably trying to show them in the red-and-yellow uniforms of those units."

Provenance: Christie's Scotland, June 12, 1996, Lot 200, sold for $17,646; Estate of Elizabeth Ross Johnson, Vail, Colorado; Private Collection

linen strips verso at splits in panel, yellowed varnish, small points of retouch, abrasions at edges; frame with losses to composition