Kenneth Macleay (1802 - 1878)

Kenneth Macleay

Kenneth Macleay was a Scottish and British portrait and miniature painter and one of the founders of the Royal Scottish Academy.

Kenneth Macleay made his reputation painting portraits in watercolor in sizes ranging from ivory miniatures to full-length images. After painting portraits of Queen Victoria's three youngest sons in the early 1860s, Kenneth Macleay was commissioned to create several more portraits of the Queen's favorite cronies, as well as miniature and watercolor portraits.

This was followed by a larger commission, which became the most important of the artist's career: a series of portraits of the most important Highland clansmen for publication. The first group of portraits were executed in the second half of the 1860s and exhibited by John Mitchell in Old Bond Street in 1869. They were then reproduced in chromolithography by the leading London lithographer Vincent Brooks (1814-1885) as illustrations for the two-volume The Highlanders of Scotland.