Some further notes on the Niel Gow images

John Glen’s Collection of the Dance Music of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1895), Vol. 2 notes that Raeburn painted portraits of Niel Gow for:

  • County Hall, Perth (1st)
  • The Duke of Athole
  • Hon. Mr Maule of Panmure
  • The Gow Family

The Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1968) Vol VIII, p. 294 quotes P. R. Drummond Perthshire in Bygone Days (1879) who states that the 1816 mezzotint by Say was called ‘the perfection of likeness’.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery oil painting would appear not to be one of the above mentioned but one which had been in the painter’s family. Duncan Thomson Raeburn (Edinburgh, 1997), p. 106.