Kate Retford

Advancing with the Army: Medicine, the Professions, and Social Mobility in the British Isles 1790-1850

Introduction: The French Wars, Industrialisation and the Professions 1. Army medical service 2. Background 3. Education 4. Army Careers 5. Professional Life Outside the Service 6. Fortunes and Families 7. Enquiring Minds 8. Reflection

The evidence of the conversation piece: Thomas Bardwell's The Broke and Bowes Families (1740)

ABSTRACT The picture discussed apparently represents a ‘snapshot’ of eighteenth-century family life. However, it is argued in this article that it is problematic to approach such visual material as if it can render direct evidence of a past, historical reality. This is not simply because art may distort or misrepresent its subject matter. Such an approach is also in danger of ignoring the potential evidence embodied in the representation itself – in this case, both a highly self-conscious ‘display’ of modern life and an historically meaningful act of artistic prowess.

‘The small Domestic & conversation style’: David Allan and Scottish Portraiture in the Late Eighteenth Century

This article focuses on two conversation pieces by the eighteenth-century Scottish artist David Allan: The Family of the 4th Duke of Atholl (1780) and Sir James Grant (1785). One of the most vital characteristics of the conversation piece was its delineation of customary detail: the ‘mode & manner of the time & habits’, to use George Vertue’s phrase. These paintings feature detailed description of Highland costume, Highland custom and Highland country – and, in so doing, provide invaluable insights into the rapidly evolving, increasingly romanticized image of the Highlands in the later eighteenth century. They offer distinct views into the changing connotations of tartan and Highland custom in the decades following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, the place of these cultural nationalist signs within the ‘concentric loyalties’ of Scots in this period and the relationship between Highlandism and values associated with the Union.