"Outlying Kith-and-Kin": The Last of the Clan

By Kasia Middleton

“When the steamer had slowly backed out, and John MacAlpine had thrown off the hawser, we began to feel that our once powerful clan was now represented by a feeble old man and his granddaughter, who, together with some outlying kith-and-kin, myself among the number, owned not a single blade of grass in the glen that was once all our own.” This was the text which accompanied Thomas Faed’s painting The Last of the Clan in 1865, when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. It describes the feeling of the weakened community depicted, watching as the rope binding their kin to their ancestral land is severed in the search for a new home, where they might find peace and prosperity. We cannot see the ones who are leaving. Faed affords his viewers no glimpse of hope, and plenty of miserable faces. The central figure, a clansman, clad in traditional Highland clothing, (likely the “feeble old man”) sits on an equally frail horse. Both rider and mount bow their heads sadly. The “grass in the glen” is barely visible in the distance. The ground here is hardly verdant, and is strewn with small remnants of life: pottery, boxes, a dead bird. One woman openly weeps. In the background, a small child has a stick resting on its shoulder. We cannot see the end of it, but if it bore the weight of a bundle of possessions, it would not surprise us. The spectre of emigration hangs heavy over the new generation, left with little land or hope for their future in the wake of the Highland Clearances.

Thomas Faed, The Last of the Clan, 1865. Oil on canvas, 84 cm x 110 cm. The Fleming Collection. Image courtesy of The Fleming Collection.

Thomas Faed (1825-1900) was one of four children, each of whom became an artist. They were from Gatehouse-of-Fleet, and trained in Edinburgh. Faed exhibited successfully at the Royal Academy in London, where he later moved. The Last of the Clan is one of his best-known paintings. It came at a time when numerous Scottish artists were painting genre scenes relating to the mass emigration of Scottish people in response to the devastation wrought by the Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We might think of the work of William McTaggart (1835-1910), which influenced the Pre-Raphaelites. His painting The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship (1895) offers the opposite view to the one in Faed’s work. A large ship sails away on a sunny horizon, and left on the shore are outlines, people as ghostly and faint as their culture and way of life have become in the wake of their oppression.

William McTaggart, The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship, 1895. Oil on canvas, 77 cm x 87.5 cm. National Galleries of Scotland. Image courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland.

The Clearances are not a subject shied away from by more modern artists, either. Reinhard Behrens, a German artist who has lived and worked in Scotland, produced a work inspired by the abandoned community of Boraraig on Skye, where all that is now visible are the ruins featured in his etching. Above it, hanging in the sky like archaeological ghosts, are artefacts found in these crofts, items which tell us that people were once here, if the walls of their homes were not indication enough. They remind us of the items strewn across the ground in Faed’s painting. By positioning these items above the ruined croft, we are reminded of life – we are forced to reconcile the foot which stood in the shoe and the hand which turned the key as people, and the ruined rectangle below as their home.

Reinhard Behrens, Boreraig, Skye, 1986. Etching and aquatint, 65 cm x 50 cm. Private collection. Image courtesy of The Scottish Gallery.

This takes us to now. We live in a world which increasingly undervalues the study of humanities. Career prospects are currency, and the dreaded ‘low-earning potential’ of an arts degree frequently sees it in the line of fire. It is not surprising, or a coincidence, that we also live in a world which is bearing witness to an alarming increase in far-right political movements. We rob ourselves of our humanity when we rob ourselves of art. Would anyone in attendance at the recent far-right protests in Glasgow truly begrudge Faed’s clansman, bowed head clad in a tam o’ shanter, the right to both his heritage and safety? Scotland occupies a unique position in history, as both a victim of English oppression and accomplice to British imperialism. This is a nation which is uniquely placed to understand the plight of the other and the perspective of the persecutor. In looking at Faed’s picture, then, it is essential to ask: with their own land ravaged by the hands of a wealthy few, and no hope left for the clan but to move, who could possibly say they made the wrong choice in choosing the danger of migration over the danger of staying? In the words of Scotland’s bard: “Man’s inhumanity to man / Makes countless thousands mourn”. Faed’s sadness is palpable, and his message clear: the choice to leave was not one taken lightly. We can only hope that in their new land, the clan find a tolerant environment in which to keep what is left of their culture alive. The viewer is positioned with the emigrants, asking us to feel the sense of displacement ourselves. I ask my readers to sit with the discomfort. I ask them to remember it, and I ask them to learn from it, that we might not repeat the errors of our past.

Bibliography:

Boyd, Alexander. "Trauma and the Scottish Gàidhealtachd - Contemporary artistic responses to the Highland Clearances." Image & Text 36 (2022): 1-29.

Brooks, Libby. “Anti-immigration protesters and counter-protesters clash in Glasgow.” The Guardian, 20th September 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/20/anti-immigration-protesters-and-counter-protesters-clash-in-glasgow

Burns, Robert. “Man Was Made To Mourn.” BBC, 2014. Accessed 27th October 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/works/man_was_made_to_mourn/

Cook, James. “The battle for Scotland’s flag: Why the right has adopted the saltire.” BBC News, 8th October 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyxqknx7jqo

Fleming Collection. “The Last of the Clan.” Accessed 27th October 2025. https://flemingcollection.com/collection/search-the-collection/the-last-of-the-clan-1865-288

National Galleries of Scotland. “William McTaggart.” 20th January 2025. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/william-mctaggart

Scottish Gallery, The. “Boreraig, Skye.” Accessed 27th October 2025. https://scottish-gallery.co.uk/product/boreraig-skye-3/