painting / Shane Leslie, Gaelic League, 1906

Portrait painting of Sir Shane Leslie, seated, wearing the first Gaelic League kilt. A saffron kilt, of a type first worn by Lord Ashbourne, the McGilly Bride, the second worn by Captain Cuffe, a relative of Lord Desart. Lesie had this third kilt made on the advice of Standish O'Grady, and wore it while he was a Cambridge University undergraduate from 1905 to 1908. In the meantime Colonel Morris had taken it as a grab for the pipers of the Irish Guards. The portrait was painted by his father, Sir John Leslie, in 1906, when Shane came of age. With letter from Shane Leslie describing the development of the kilt (removed to NMI Archive).;