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Pair of gent's purple woollen breeches

Outfitter: R W ForsythDesigner: Macgillivray, James Pittendrigh, RSA · 1856-1938Wearer: Paterson, James, RSA · 1854-1932Buckle-maker: unknown

Pair of gent's purple woollen breeches

vide Esme Gordon's "The Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, 1826-1976," pp.195-196. For Macgillivray's original designs…

vide Esme Gordon's "The Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, 1826-1976," pp.195-196.

For Macgillivray's original designs vide NGS D4025 "First Design for Robe Worn by Royal Scottish Academicians," pencil on paper, not dated, gifted by the artist's daughter, 1938. The sketch is of a standing bearded man (looking like a self-portrait of Macgillivray) wearing a mortar-board type cap, with a longer than three-quarter length gown with full length sleeves terminating in lace cuffs and bearing a large gilt braid ornament on the middle of each sleeve, beneath the hem of the gown are shown ribbed stockings and leather shoes with a simple front mounted silver gilt shoe buckle and a slight heel, whilst at the flat collar the tunic beneath is shown with a lace ruff behind the upright collar and a multiple button fastening down its left side as worn.

The drawing is inscribed and signed in pencil to the right; Gown of lilac purple/ cloth. Cap and / stoles velvet of a reder[sic] purple. Faculties differenced/ by colours of silk / vest and upper surface/ of collars - also of/ silk./ Painting - red/ Sculpture - blue/ Architecture - green/ Members distinguished/ by one gold frog[?]/ on each sleeve/ silk instead of cloth for President/ - Evening dress/ - maroon morocco/ shoes with silver gilt/ buckles and vermillion/ heels. Stockings of/ purple silk/ Knee-breeches of/ purple cloth. Macgillivray[signed]"

The mount is inscribed by the artist; "My first design for Royal Scottish Academy Robe/ slightly altered at the finish, but mine in every/ detail as now worn. But the Council had not the artistic sense to/ adopt the different colours for the faculties - a dull, self-conscious lot!"

Working from this appears to be the watercolour and pencil study gifted to the RSA Collections by Robert Anderson of Glasgow in 1976 in the wake of the 150th Anniversary Exhibition (RSA 1994.363) which has a near identical figure and pose to the right but now wearing a gown which terminates its sleeves at the elbow, and very much like the present robes. The left hand figure, apparently offering the first of two options, has a red gown, its borders trimmed, and with the sleeves more akin to additional folds of the gown akin to a Renaissance style gown.

R H Rodger, RSA Documentation Officer identifies a potential source for these designs, not least Option 1, in Macgillivray's life size bronze statue of John Knox for St Giles Cathedral, which was unveiled in 1906, and which shows many similarities including the gown and the cap.

Vide RSA 1994.094 for Sir Herbert James Gunn's Portrait of Sir William Oliphant Hutchison PRSA which was exhibited a the RSA AX in 1953 (cat.242) which depicts the sitter wearing his official robes and showing the purple knee breeches and purple stockings.

For a colour photograph showing RSA Council members waiting to greet visitors to the RSA AX in 2015, and bedecked in their official robes, is reproduced over pp.156-157 of "2003-2013 A Decade of Change", RSA (2015).

the buttons are not stamped, however the garment itself was probably made in Edinburgh by R W Forsyth