ENGLISH SCHOOL (18th CENTURY)
Portrait miniature Lord Robert Kerr, wearing blue coat over a grey waistcoat, white stock and frilled cravat, his hair powdered and worn en queue
watercolour and bodycolour on ivory
gilt-metal mount set into a rectangular gilt-wood frame; inscribed with an extract taken from The History of the Rebellion in the year 1745 by John Home Esq., published in 1802, London (on the reverse)
oval, 60 mm (2 1/2 in) high

PROVENANCE:
Kerr family, thence by descent.

Lord Robert Kerr (d.1746), was a Scottish nobleman of the clan Kerr, and the second son of William Kerr, 3rd Marquess of Lothian. He is thought to have gone on a grand tour of Europe between 1732 and 1739, on which he acquired the only surviving score of the Il Gran Mogul concerto by Vivaldi – he played the flute himself.

He was commissioned into the army in 1739 and fought at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 as Captain of the Grenadiers in Barrell's Regiment. He is reported to have received the leading Highlander on the point of his spontoon, but then a second Hghlander cut him through from head to chin, making him the only high-ranking Government soldier to be killed in the battle. Many accounts of Culloden cite Major Gillies MacBean of Lady Anne Mackintosh's regiment as the man who killed Kerr, and this remains in the traditional historical memory of Clan MacBean. His Great Uncle, General Lord Mark Kerr's regiment – 'Kerr's (11th) Dragoons' were also at Culloden.

This lot is subject to CITES regulations