‘The Death of a Stag’ at the National Gallery of Scotland

The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL

This is the largest painting in Scotland, and it is by an American artist.  The full title is ‘Alexander III of Scotland Rescued from the Fury of a Stag by the Intrepidity of Colin Fitzgerald.’ The artist was Benjamin West, who hailed from Pennsylvania, and five years after his arrival in London in 1768, he was elected as a founder-member of the Royal Academy of Arts, having become an established portraitist and painter of historical subjects. His painting of ‘Death of a Stag’ created a sensation when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1786. Quite apart from its huge size (it measures some 12 feet high by 17 feet wide), it proved to be a powerful piece of dynastic propaganda for Francis Humberston Mackenzie, the last hereditary chieftain of the Seaforth line of Clan Mackenzie.

The painting was produced on the scale of a royal or state commission, at a price equivalent to West’s annual stipend as official history painter to King George III. It shows an incident which supposedly took place during a royal hunt near Kincardine in the later 13th century, in which Colin Fitzgerald wrestled a furious stag to its knees before dispatching it with his spear. It may be seen as a skillfully stage-managed and politically-driven celebration of the preservation of the monarchy by the legendary ancestor of the Clan Mackenzie.