Ritratto di John Murray, quarto conte di Dunmore

When Dunmore stood for this full-length in 1765, most Scots were forbidden by law to dress as he does here. After the Jacobite rising was crushed at Culloden in 1746, Parliament banned Highland dress outright, and the ban was still in force. Dunmore gets around it on a technicality. He wears the tartan of a Highland regiment of Foot Guards, and serving soldiers were exempt. So Reynolds shows a Scottish nobleman in the belted plaid his own countrymen could be fined or jailed for putting on. The Dress Act was not repealed until 1782. Dunmore himself went on to serve the Crown as colonial governor, first of New York and then of Virginia.