Colonel Alastair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry by Henry Raeburn at the Scottish National Gallery

Wearing tartan from head to toe, Macdonnell of Glengarry seems, in this portrait, to be the perfect image of a highland chief. However, Macdonnell's romantic attachment to the customs and costumes of Gaelic culture did not stop him evicting his tenants to clear his lands for sheep farming. The writer Sir Walter Scott was a close friend and he was probably thinking of Macdonnell when he created the character of the doomed Jacobite clan chieftain, Any series of great images of highlanders and kilts, I mean they're total corny cliches, but for a child this was exciting. This was a thrill and as a young boy it wasn't even just the subjects that Rayburn tackled in those most romantic kinds of portraits, but it was the way that he approached the canvas. It was an instinctive, spontaneous, flamboyant style that I was thrilled by. And gradually, as I've hopefully matured as an artist, I've also begun to look at all the other great portrait painters who have surrounded Rayburn, and particularly recently Alan Ramsey, and admiring what makes him slightly different from someone like Rayburn. Sir Henry Rayburn was a renowned British painter who was born on March 4, 1756 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. He remained based in Scotland and became the country's first significant portrait painter since the Union. Rayburn became famous during the Romanticism period and his primary field was portrait painting.